tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-274625762024-03-06T22:45:40.616-08:00Pop Goes the SlopLife in South Mumbai long ago as well as contemporary concerns including cinema, fiction and socio-cultural topics form the core of Pop Goes the Slop.Deepak Mankarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16135017690358976557noreply@blogger.comBlogger450125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27462576.post-39632734743006059052015-03-29T23:26:00.001-07:002015-07-07T01:42:34.757-07:00Liar, liar, pants on fire. Hanging on a telephone wire.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">That I shall leave this world unsung is, truth to
tell, a blessing in disguise. Haven’t you noticed how Indian obit writers
unabashedly indulge themselves in flights of fancy and plumb the depth of obsequity – apart from vandalizing the
English language mercilessly − when it comes to doing their job without fear or
favour? (In their midst, not even a single Saadat Hasan Manto, eh?) Their
unspoken excuse is that hypocrisy as a tenet of (politically?) correct
behaviour is allegedly a part and parcel of Indian “culture”. It stipulates
that no evil shall be spoken of the dearly departed never mind even if the
truth has to be bent backwards or stood on its head as the situation requires.
Little white lies are to be preferred to the beam of white light the poor man
or woman may be facing in the hereafter. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Before you point your accusatory finger at me for
blithely following their exemplary example in titling this post, let me confess
to a weakness for children’s ditties (simple words, uncomplicated rhyming,
easy-to-memorize) over the more obfuscatingly worded verses of the
idiosyncratic 19<sup>th</sup>-century poet. Mind you, this worthy was shunned
by his envious and contemptuous contemporaries but posthumously hailed by
latter-day critics as no less than a mystical visionary of the Romantic Age. I
am thinking of the late and latterly lamented William Blake<b> </b>(1757-1827), Esquire, to wit. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">To put the records straight, this
impudent versifier must have somehow got privy to the likelihood of his
impending<b><i> </i></b>canonization in the annals of literature in the not too
faraway future. To make sure it would come about, he cunningly decided to take
recourse to an imagined version of Peter Roget’s “classed catalogue of words …
of much use in literary composition” and launched his much celebrated poem,
“The Liar” (1810), with a double-barreled fusillade of synonyms<b> </b></span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://yhoo.it/1kFVsdE"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">http://yhoo.it/1kFVsdE</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">“Deceiver,
dissembler </span></i></div>
<i></i><br />
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<i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Your trousers are alight </span></i></i></div>
<i>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"></span></i>
<br />
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">From what pole or gallows </span></i></span></i></div>
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">
</span></i>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Shall they dangle in the night?”</span></i></span></i></div>
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">
<o:p></o:p></span></i>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Ah,
the infinite riches of the English language! A word for every shade of meaning
yielding a surfeit of synonyms in most cases. But what we think is its strength
could well be harbouring the seeds of its weakness, making it an easy tool of
deceit when wielded by deceivers, dissemblers, fibbers, fabulists, perjurers,
fabricators, story tellers, tale weavers, poets, dissimulators, falsifiers, con
artists, deluders, imposters, false witnesses, fablers, misleaders,
equivocators, tricksters, conjurors, quacks, pretenders, swindlers,
statisticians and assorted liars of every ilk. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The
celebrated American humourist and author, Mark Twain (1835-1910), is credited
with this oft-quoted witticism: "There are three kinds of lies: lies,
damned lies and statistics." He,
however, modestly declined authorship and pointed the finger at Disraeli
(1804-1881). That itself turned out to be a posture. An essay on The University
of York website on a Department of Mathematics page </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://bit.ly/1sh70cv"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">http://bit.ly/1sh70cv</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> dealing with the various
occurrences of “lies, damned …” avers, though not confidently, that its most
likely source was Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke (1843-1911), a Liberal MP of the
Victorian era, Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in Gladstone's
second government and a Privy Council member whose extra-marital affairs ruined
his political career. The Dilke wordings differ slightly, though: “fibs, lies,
and statistics” in press reportage and “a fib, a lie, and statistics” in a
verbal citing. Can you tell the truth from the lie?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Dr
Samuel Johnson, the pioneer English lexicographer, once remarked:
"Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement." The two
swindlers in Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes” faithfully
followed that dictum to spread the word that they wove the finest cloth with
colours as delicate as the butterflies’ and the cloth itself as light as
gossamer with patterns beautiful and unusually intricate. Moreover, they
claimed a magical quality for their cloth: stupid or incompetent people could
not see it. The reigning Emperor who was quite a vain fob and nearly everyone else
in the kingdom was taken in by the “large promise”, i.e., the enormous lie.
Finally, it took a child’s innocence to pierce the veil of the falsehood.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Lying,
come to think of it, is more often than not a work-in-progress. Once you have
started your career as a liar, you have got to keep at it telling more lies to
cover up the original lie. A soap ad on the idiot box, for instance, makes the
claim that the product can deal the new strains of virus “ordinary” soaps
cannot tackle. To further enhance the credibility of this claim, accreditation
by a London organization connected with public health awarded for the brand’s
hygiene-education initiative about <i>hand
washing</i> </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://bit.ly/1pGXL3r"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">http://bit.ly/1pGXL3r</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> is touted as recognition
of its improved wide-spectrum anti-virus action against newer strains. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Equally
amusing are the truth-bending antics of toothpaste advertisers. Even if you
brush your teeth twice a day, I am reasonably certain you gargle away nearly every
trace of it from your mouth and teeth afterwards. So, unless the just brushed
toothpaste’s foam defies the force of the gargle and resolutely clings to the
teeth’s enamel or, better still, impregnates it and thus becomes a part of it,
how can anyone in his right mind − and his tongue not firmly tucked in his
cheek − claim with a straight face that the toothpaste keeps doing its good
work in your mouth for 12 hours? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">All
this reminds me of Edgar Wallace’s <i>Educated
Evans</i> stories about the exploits of a racing tout in the early part of the
last century. Evans was apparently a character based on Wallace’s own
experience as a tout before he turned a journalist. This irrepressible
yarn-spinner laid claims to “inside information straight from the horse’s
mouth” about fixed races. Many of these scams were quite bizarre and hard to
believe unless you were a born victim. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">“The
reason for evil in the world is that people are not able to tell their
stories,” opined Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961). When denied the attention, do
they resort to lies in order to get a hearing? From little white ones to big
black ones? The former are harmless diversions. The latter are motivated by
intent to deceive. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In
a Stephan Pastis’s Pearls Before Swine comic strip episode (Mumbai Mirror, 28 </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">March 2015), Rat and Goat have the following existential chitchat:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Rat</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">: I have a large brain and it’s been
conclusively proven that those with larger brains are smarter than those with
smaller brains.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Goat</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">: That’s not true.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Rat</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">: Yes, it is.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Goat</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">: How do you know?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Rat</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">: Because something is true whenever
you say it has been conclusively proven.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Goat</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">: That’s not how that works.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Rat</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">: Hey, in an age where no one reads,
it’s how that works.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">(I
don’t know about you but I agree with Rat about the power of “conclusively
proven”; I have recently seen it being used in a TV ad of a leading tea brand claiming to contain herbal ingredients capable
of keeping the tea drinker healthy and productive. The only evidence offered in
support of the claim is, yes, you got it right: “conclusively proven”.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">By
the way, if you did not like the above ending, I have another up my sleeve in the
illustrious tradition of the fabulous fibber, Groucho Marx. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">A
priest and a rabbi along with a pair of flaming panties (oops, pants) walked
into a bar… Still don’t like it? Too bad, bud.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Deepak Mankarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16135017690358976557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27462576.post-23970938672449721772015-03-22T22:54:00.000-07:002015-03-29T23:13:28.818-07:00Rape, rape, go away. Little Mina wants to play. (Why rape won’t ever quit India. Or, anywhere else for that matter.)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">What
is rape? The word derives most likely from the 14<sup>th</sup> century Middle English
<i>rapen</i> out of the Anglo-French <i>raper</i> from the Latin <i>rapere</i> meaning “to seize, carry off by
force, plunder”. <a href="http://bit.ly/1MZpGV7">http://bit.ly/1MZpGV7</a> Culturally
viewed, it is an atavistic act harking back to the male chauvinistic, patriarchal,
feudalistic past. The Latin word <i>atavus </i>refers
to the great-great-great-grandfather or an ancestor. For the victim, rape is
existentially disruptive. For the perpetrator, rape is more often than not a
crime of opportunity. <i>Ergo</i>,
unpredictable and impossible to anticipate and prevent. Equally, it is a crime
that requires the existence of a special kind of mindset in the perpetrator who
may hail from any caste, class, region and religion, often from among the close
acquaintances of the victim. Mind mapping of a potential rapist would reveal, I
suspect, the existence of a patriarchal, fedudalistic terrain wherein the power
equation is forever set against women. To the rapist, women are vassals in
perpetuity. Men are the all-powerful lords and masters entitled to all kinds of
privileges as well as access to every conceivable resource including the
vassals’ bodies. The by now widely publicized views of many authority figures
as well as the rapist in the Nirbhaya case lend credence to this contention. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">This
set of core “tenets” is not documented but informally passed on from generation
to generation. So strong is their stranglehold on Indians that even some of the
womenfolk willingly and readily assist their “betters” in enforcing them. This
is abundantly evident by their inclusion in the perpetrators’ line-up in dowry
and honour killings. Even village elders, <i>gotra</i>
(clan)-inspired <i>khap panchayats</i> and
similar formal or informal tribal networks willingly join such woman-hating
initiatives. One is often led to wonder if the paternalistic underpinnings of
most religions like Vedantism/Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Christianity do not
make them the ideal breeding grounds for the rapist as well as the terrorist
mindsets.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In
the sexually vitiated Indian context, the subtext of dowry reads like this in
the warped male mind: I’m taking “the burden” off your hands. So, pay up whatever
I ask for and shut up. Of the resistance to widow remarriage: I have no use for
“used goods”. (Objectification of women is routinely implicit in all misogynous
behaviour and thinking. Even in the “civilized” Occident, only wives are
swapped, never husbands, remember?) Of “provocative” dressing and behaviour by
women: Take me. I am available.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Have
you noticed the oft-recurring visual tableaux in most dances performed by
couples? The male dancer supports his female partner with his arm wrapped
around her waist, his face looming over hers and she is arching backward as far
as she can as if to keep as much distance between the two as possible. Male
superiority/male dominance is written all over this image – just as it is in
the iconic RK Films logo − even when the choreography is orchestrated by a
woman. By so doing, is she (the female dancer): (a) accepting her inferior
status in the relationship or (b) repelling the male’s advances (a crypto-rape
scenario)? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Then,
there is the all-time classic, time-honoured “Krishna Leela” defence and/or
ratiocination, based on a myth deeply embedded in the Indian consciousness,
which nobody seems to question or object to. Krishna, the legendary lover with
reportedly 16108 wives (none of them won by relentless ragging, though),
well-known for his playful and innocent antics <i>as a child</i> of hiding the clothes of bathing <i>gopis</i>, teasing them to distraction and taking advantage of their affection
to rob them of butter, is heralded as the beacon of how a young man should woo
a young woman of his fancy, i.e., the one who currently triggers an upsurge of
testosterone in him. The “boys will be boys” justification is used with
impunity, time and again, to condone disrespectful treatment of women by “manly”
men. In the fifties and sixties, there was a spate of Hindi movies featuring
Dev Anand, Shammi Kapoor, Shashi Kapoor and even Joy Mukerjee – the poor girl’s
Shammi Kapoor − emulating this “Krishna” school of how to woo a girl and not compromise
your machismo. This sort of depiction of the male-female equation continues to
exist in one form or another in movies and on the idiot box even now. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Much
as I would like to take an optimistic view of the situation, no way out of this
well-entrenched psycho-socio-cultural impasse seems to exist in my opinion. Legal
and/or extra-legal (e.g., lynching and, on the milder side, protests march,
candle light processions, advertising to persuade the would-be rapist to shed
his sinful ways) solutions cannot achieve the desired result. The only way to
do it is to change for the better the existing attitude and belief super structure
of India. And that, as the dashing, debonair Don would have so eloquently put
it, is not only difficult but impossible (= “<i>mushkil hi nahin, namumkin hai</i>”). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Deepak Mankarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16135017690358976557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27462576.post-53104686222880889982015-03-20T19:11:00.000-07:002015-03-22T22:48:52.502-07:00Mr Godin says No. (Is God in?)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Some days,
it’s best to stay in bed. Friday, 20 March (not 13,</span><sup style="line-height: 115%;"> </sup><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">mind you, but the
unpropitious New Moon Day nonetheless) was one of them. In the morning, the
horrendously expensive family fish tank sprung a leak and had to be put to
pasture. Not taking a hint from the admonitory turn of events, I ventured to
send an email to Seth Godin asking for his help to get my novel, </span><i style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">The Last Gandhi Movie</i><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">, published. It
went out smack at 3 p.m. and read as follows:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Sub: The
Last Gandhi Movie: Have I invented the N<i>u</i>vel?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Dear Mr
Godin:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Addressing
you as “Dear Seth”, I presume, would perhaps be a tad impertinent. The story
I’m about to tell is far from, though. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">At
the end of the 20<sup>th</sup> century, I bought a book on impulse. <i>How to Mutate and Take Over the World</i>
(Ballantine, 1996) by a pair of pseudonymous authors was subtitled “An Exploded
Post Novel”. An Amazon reader review (05-01-2002) describes it as “… a mix of
email between the two authors, interspersed with email to their publisher, news
stories, book reviews (yes, reviews for a book in the book they review, and
very poor ones too!), and interviews. We are left no knowledge of what is real,
fake or somewhere in between.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Around
that time, I also wrote a novel, <i>The Last
Gandhi Movie, </i>but did not work hard to market<i> </i>it except making a rather interesting website (<i>The Last Known Address of MK Gandhi, Esquire</i>)<i>. </i>Unfortunately, the company that made
it closed down and I have only a CD of the website with partial contents. It is
also still there on the Wayback Machine, in bits and pieces but not really
enough of it.<i> </i>By the way, <i>The Last Gandhi </i>Movie shares two devices
of storytelling with <i>How to Mutate and
Take Over the World</i>: [1] book reviews and [2] author interview by a hostile
critic. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">In
November 2014, I decided to revive <i>The
Last Gandhi Movie</i>. It had suddenly dawned on me that it would work better as
a novel if there were a counterpoint added to the main text. There are three
narrative strands in the now marginally revised main text: (1) Gandhi, (2) movies
and (3) the life and exploits of the nameless narrator. I wrote <i>The Last Gandhi Movie</i> with the digitally
inclined reader in mind: very short attention span, familiarity with and
fondness for clipped email/sms/twitter style of writing, impatience with
over-sentimental plotting. The counterpoint I added to the earlier text in
November-December 2014 is a literary innovation of sorts (“<i>RetroNotes</i>”). </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;">Some may dismiss the </span><i><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">RetroNotes</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;"> as the writer’s “after-thoughts”
and/or his attempt to pre-empt the critics. Others may see their role in adding
valuable clues of historical, socio-cultural and psychological context to the
story telling. At times, the RetroNotes act as the proverbial Devil’s Advocate
adding a dash of contrarian pungency to the narrative. At others, they work as
an alienation device. By accident, I may have “invented the N<i>u</i>vel”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;">But why am I eschewing the regular
publishing route? Mainly because I see more and more publishers abandoning
literary fiction for bestsellers and have closed minds to </span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">experimental fiction especially. Maybe, I could go
with <i>Kickstarter</i>. But my guess is: it
works best only for a celebrity writer. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">To
give <i>The Last Gandhi Movie </i>a viral
shot in the arm and also to test reader reaction, I am planning to upload it to
</span><a href="https://www.academia.edu/"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">https://www.academia.edu</span></a><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">. This website has 18,581,427 academically inclined
members and attracts over 15.7 million unique visitors a month according to the
‘About’ page. Among them, quite a few are interested in Gandhian and related
studies.<i> </i>This may even help me to
find a publisher.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The only
time you cited Gandhi was in <i>Tribes: We
Need You to Lead Us</i>: “There's no record of Martin Luther King, Jr. or
Gandhi whining about credit. Credit isn't the point. Change is.”</span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; color: #181818; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span class="apple-converted-space"><i><span style="background: white; color: #181818; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></i></span></div>
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<span class="apple-converted-space"><i><span style="background: white; color: #181818; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The Last Gandhi Movie</span></i></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><i><span style="background: white; color: #181818; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></i></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; color: #181818; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">is about <i>changing</i>
the way novels are supposed to be written. Perhaps, as a best-selling author,
speaker and agent of change, you may vouchsafe to </span></span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;">help
publish a path-breaking literary innovation. I am aware that you do not do any
coaching, investing or consulting. So why should you make an exception in my
case? Having sensed your entrepreneurial zeal and curiosity about anything new from
your writings, I think just maybe you’ll do it. If not, at least pitch in a few
suggestions on how to go about it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;">I’ve not attached the text of my “<i>magnum opus</i>” to this email. I would do
so only after you give me the permission to send it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;">Do I have your permission?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;">Meanwhile, many thanks for reading the email. I know fully well I cannot
rule out the worst-case scenario. You may say No, thank you. Well, Sir, I am
ready to take it on my 78 year-old chin. And, grin.</span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;">Warm regards,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;">Sincerely,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;">Deepak Mankar<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;">At 3:54 p.m., Mr Godin wrote back:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">[T]hank you
Deepak, for the thoughtful note and for the work you do<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I’m afraid
that I can’t possibly do your work justice. I’m totally swamped.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Good luck
with all of it, sir.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Seth<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I read the
reply about half an hour later and expressed my gratitude at 4:31 p.m. thus:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Thanks, Mr
Godin. You are prompt and forthright. I appreciate it. Thanks again and
regards,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Deepak
Mankar<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">There the
matter rests. As I was saying earlier, some days it’s best to stay in bed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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</div>
Deepak Mankarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16135017690358976557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27462576.post-17643715916070452482015-03-10T23:04:00.001-07:002015-05-11T03:29:14.557-07:00Two Lives in a memory warp. Being the story of the Mankar couple who lived and died at 233 Khetwadi Main Road as remembered by their son.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Is
there such a thing as the “perfect memoir”? Search me. That nothing of that ilk
has probably ever been extant dawned on me only when I started thinking about
writing one about my parents, Aai (<i>c.</i>
1897 - 1962) and Baba (<i>c.</i> 1880 -
1965). Unfortunately, much too late in my life did I come to realize that their
lives were worth being scrutinized with curiosity and recorded with love and
understanding by their son. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Reader
warned.</span></i></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> Doing it has been far from simple, though. Their past before my birth had
been more or less a closed book to me. I had never tried to steal even a
glimpse of it. So I had to make do with half-remembered hearsay and third-party
“testimony” heard or overheard on various occasions and filed away for future
use, as it were. Being human makes my memory as fallible and untrustworthy as
the next person’s. Also, all along, I have been accustomed to view life through
the prism of accumulated prejudices and assumptions acquired over the decades.
Much as I may try to shed them, I can never be sure they aren’t there at a
given moment. So what you will read here is the story of Mr Waman Keshavji
Mankar, Esq., and his lawfully wedded spouse, Laxmibai (née Manak Ajinkya), the
original Mankar couple of 233 Khetwadi Main Road </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://bit.ly/1fcggIG"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">http://bit.ly/1fcggIG</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> – as far as I could assemble
the mosaic of lost time though undoubtedly not without flaws. Readers will also
have to pardon me for sounding embittered and deeply resentful when I refer to
some of the people featuring in the tale and their vile deeds. That is how I
feel about what happened. Hypocrisy and I never had even a nodding acquaintance.
That’s a fact plain and simple − neither hubris nor a boast. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Name
decodified.</span></i></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> Before we go any further, I have a theory about the origin of our family
name although I cannot lay a claim to the expertise of an etymologist or a polyglot.
The “Man” (or the phonetic “Maan”) part of the word “Mankar”, I dare say, might
have come from the Marathi word “Maan” (= status, privilege, right) used in a
community-centric context. The surname “Mankar” might have thus alluded to a
clan who had status in the community and enjoyed certain privileges owing to
it. W.E. Gladstone Solomon, art historian, though, had a slightly different
take on the surname mentioned in his study, <i>The
Charm of Indian Art</i>; “Mankar”, he averred, signified “the noble one”. </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://tinyurl.com/3fnunj"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">http://tinyurl.com/3fnunj</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> Fair enough.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<b><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Sad but
true.</span></i></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">
There were at least three occasions when I saw and/or heard my father crying.
The first one was sometime in 1944 or 1945 when I was 8 or 9 years old lying in
bed in the dead of night and trying not to hear his stifled sobs. The incidence
is described at </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://bit.ly/1rHygza"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">http://bit.ly/1rHygza</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">. The trigger was my
sister’s avowal to marry a Muslim colleague apparently and her consequent and
sudden disappearance from 233 Khetwadi Main Road one Saturday afternoon. (Later,
her elder daughter revealed that her mother had in fact been spurned by her
alleged boy friend.) The second time I saw Baba sobbing was when he came home after
work one sad evening in 1962 and learned that Aai, his by-then estranged wife,
had succumbed to her lingering ailment (leukemia) in the Bombay Hospital. The
third occasion in 1965 – a short while before his death − was described to me
by Ujwal. Baba, as was his wont, was entertaining his elder grandson. Ashu was
perched precariously on the edge of the dining table and laughing his head off
at his grandfather’s antics as he enacted a funny tale. While thus occupied, he
fell off and crashed to the floor. He was a bit stunned but otherwise quite
okay while Baba had by then freaked out and was sobbing uncontrollably. It took
all of Ujwal’s persuasive skill to calm him down and convince him that all was
well. He had great rapport with Ashu and Abhi, then toddlers, as well as their
mother. He used to rock his grandsons on his haunches and sing to them ditties
of his own making, much to their unmitigated delight. </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://bit.ly/1mWMagg"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">http://bit.ly/1mWMagg</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> He was also responsible,
after Aai’s death, for freeing Ujwal from her self-imposed dress code of
wearing only sarees in deference to Aai’s wishes. He told her to wear what she
felt comfortable in while working and in daily living. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Equanimity
personified. </span></i></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">My reason to start this memoir with the sad memories was to
highlight the fact that Baba’s everyday essential mental state (<i>sthayi bhava</i>) was one of equanimity. He
must have come to this mental plateau over time, I gather, dealing with the
many problems life kept hurling at him. In my childhood, I don’t remember Baba
ever raising his voice at any of us. Even his infrequent reprimands and
admonitions for my childish transgressions were administered in a gentle,
slightly pained tone of voice. This is perhaps why he was unable to discipline
his wayward daughter well in time. At times, a raised voice gets better results
than a raised palm. He chose to raise neither.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Details,
details, details. </span></i></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">When he breathed his last in 1965, a little after I had
joined Clarion-McCann </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://bit.ly/Hls6wJ"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">http://bit.ly/Hls6wJ</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">, Baba was 85 by his own
reckoning, give or take. So, it is my conjecture that he must have been born <i>circa</i> 1880. That’s 7 years before
Victoria Terminus (now Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus) was built and 17 years
before the first automobile reached the Indian shores (barely three years after
its invention in the US of A). I don’t know anything about Baba’s father except
his name (Keshavji). Keshav is one of Lord Vishnu’s names, occurring at the 23<sup>rd</sup>
and 648<sup>th</sup> rank in Vishnu <i>Sahastranama</i>
(the thousand names of Vishnu recited in his praise), by the way. The Mankar
family, hearsay informed me, lived in Navi Wadi, a then predominantly Pathare
Prabhu precinct in South Bombay, </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://bit.ly/1oG4HJn"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">http://bit.ly/1oG4HJn</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> in near-indigent
circumstances. Navi Wadi is also where the Mankar Family deity, Maheshwari,
resides. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The way the
Prabhus dressed, worked, thought and lived. </span></i></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In Chapter 6 of Madame Helena
Patrovna Blavatsky's <i>From the Caves
and Jungles of Hindostan (1879-80)</i> </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://tinyurl.com/5l3zb7"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">http://tinyurl.com/5l3zb7</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">, she wrote about how the then current
generation of the Pathare Prabhus was living "by their pens", which
is to say "occupying all the small Government posts in the Bombay
Presidency, and so being dangerous rivals of the Bengali Babus since the time
of British rule. In Bombay, the Patan clerks reach the considerable figure of
five thousand. Their complexion is darker than the complexion of Konkan
Brahmans, but they are handsomer and brighter." In Mary Fainsod
Katzenstein’s <i>Ethnicity and Equality</i>
(Cornell University Press, New York, 1979, p.44), she cites Edwardes’ especial
reference in <i>The Gazetteer of Bombay</i>
(Vol. I, p.168) to the fact that “although up to about 1870, the dress of the
Prabhus was considered model attire, the once wealthy Prabhu families soon
began to desert their large Bombay residences for more simple, economical
flats”. She also points out that in those days the Pathare Prabhus occupied
“key administrative and clerical positions in Bombay under the British”. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Here’s
what Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar wrote in <i>Annihilation
of Caste with a Reply to Mahatma Gandhi</i> (Navayana, 2014, p.252) about
the Pathare Prabhu's abandoning their custom of widows remarrying (i.e., moving
from a progressive to a regressive stance): "At one time the Pathare
Prabhus had widow remarriage as a custom of their caste. This custom of widow remarriage
was later on looked upon as a mark of social inferiority by some members of the
caste, especially because it was contrary to the custom prevalent among the
Brahmins. With the object of raising status of their community some Pathare
Prabhus sought to stop this practice of widow remarriage that was prevalent in
their caste. The community was divided into two camps, one for and the other
against the innovation. The Peshwas took the side of those in favour of widow remarriage
and thus virtually prohibited the Pathare Prabhus from following the ways of
the Brahmins." <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The
one somewhat eccentric trait of the Pathare Prabhus mentioned by W E Gladstone
Solomon </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://tinyurl.com/3fnunj"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">http://tinyurl.com/3fnunj</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> (p.49), the
composing and singing of epithalamiums during the marriage ceremony, is
something I can personally vouch for. Written in flowery and hagiographic
Marathi, I have heard them over the decades at several weddings, even fairly
recent ones, sung to the tune of the <i>mangalashtakas</i> (mantras
solemnizing the nuptials). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Among
the many talented Pathare Prabhus of those days was Bhujangrao Mankar who was
thought of as Sir Isaac Pitman’s Indian reincarnation in his role as the
“father” of Marathi and Gujarati shorthand. By the way, the writer of one of
the earlier Marathi <i>sangeet natak</i>
(musical play), <i>Naladamayanti</i> (1879),
was a Pathare Prabhu, Sokar Bapuji Trilokekar (1835-1908). </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://bit.ly/149Oaci"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">http://bit.ly/149Oaci</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> Also, the second lead pair in the
popular musical stage hit, <i>Sangeet
Sanshaya Kallol</i> (= a pandemonium of suspicion), premiered <i>c.</i>1916, was named Phalgunrao and Kritika
Trilokekar, apparently a Pathare Prabhu couple.<i> </i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Baba’s
struggles continued.</span></i></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> Baba managed to somehow complete his higher education
probably with help from well-wishers and scholarships. He passed both his
Master of Arts as well as Bachelor of Laws examinations. Then, true to his
predilection as a deep-dyed Pathare Prabhu, he entered into the service of the
Government of Bombay Presidency as a Public Prosecutor. He retired from his
post of Presidency Magistrate, Girgaum Police Court, situated very close to 233
Khetwadi Main Road, sometime in 1936. (Later, in the 1950s, he once again
worked for the Government as the Coroner of Bombay.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Married to
Manak.</span></i></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">
Along the way, at the age of 37 or so, he married Aai, then 20, probably in
1917. They had their first offspring in 1918, Malini, a daughter. The last of
their progeny was me born eighteen years later. In between, there was a son who
did not survive. Had he managed to do so, chances are I would not be around to
tell you this tale. (According to what Ujwal was told by her mother, Aai wanted
her obstetrician friend to terminate her last pregnancy but was dissuaded from
taking the drastic step.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Self-evolved.</span></i></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> Aai belonged to the
Ajinkya family residing on the ground floor of the house opposite the Roxy
Cinema where I was born. </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://bit.ly/1yBaVUz"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">http://bit.ly/1yBaVUz</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> My four distinct
childhood memories about this spacious ground-floor flat are: (1) a wooden
swing the exact replica of the one we had in our 233 Khetwadi Main Road
residence; (2) a living room practically bereft of books; (3) a Bombay Gas
connection for cooking fuel (coal gas that used to be manufactured till the late
seventies/early eighties in a Parel plant) in the kitchen just like the one
Ujwal’s parents had; and (4) a faint odour of residual decay wafting around the
back of the house. You can read whatever little I know about Aai’s family here:
</span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://bit.ly/1uhm2Ol"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">http://bit.ly/1uhm2Ol</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> Aai’s elder brother brought
her up. I remember him as a fair and handsome man with well-maintained salt-and-pepper
mustaches. He seemed to live well after having retired from the French Bank at
the end of a long and lucrative career. I remember him giving Aai a gold guinea
coin one <i>bhai dooj</i>. I used to visit
him mostly in Aai’s company but on a couple of occasions even Baba’s. (I don’t
remember Baba ever calling on Aai’s other brother who lived with his family at
Gamdevi.) Aai had, I heard her tell,
matriculated from the Kamalabai Girls’ School in Nowroji Street where Ujwal’s
mother </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://bit.ly/1sQ0v0F"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">http://bit.ly/1sQ0v0F</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> was her classmate. Aai was small-built. One of my earliest infantile memories of her is being patted and cooed to sleep while I furiously sucked at my lower lip and kneaded a black wart situated at a respectful distance to the left of her belly button. I can vouch for the fact that, throughout my childhood, I watched her </span><span style="font-size: 18.6666660308838px; line-height: 21.4666652679443px;">cultivating </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">of her own volition an
interest in reading light literary fiction in Marathi as well as in watching quality
plays. She used to subscribe to three leading monthlies published in Marathi: <i>Kirloskar</i>, <i>Stree</i> and <i>Manohar</i> and
avidly read them cover to cover. I also remember accompanying her in April 1943 or 1944 to a
ten-night open-air festival of Marathi plays. It took place on the sea-facing ground
parallel to the BBCI (now Western) Railway tracks between the Grand Medical
College and Islam Gymkhanas on Marine Drive – a once-in-a-lifetime event staged
by the Marathi Sahitya Sangh with a view to revive the Marathi theatre. </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://bit.ly/1rI3959"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">http://bit.ly/1rI3959</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> Aai also used to take me to Marathi
plays staged in nearby theatres. You wouldn’t be wrong in concluding that she
was a patron of the arts, albeit on a very modest scale. Maybe, it was due to
her culturally-charged Pathare Prabhu genes, who knows? I must confess,
however, that she played a big role in nurturing my love for reading and the
fine arts in general by setting an example. I used to be a major contributor to
a hand-written (<i>hasta likhit</i>)
magazine in Marathi produced by the sixth and seventh grade students in my
first school. </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://bit.ly/1rZD4zY"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">http://bit.ly/1rZD4zY</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> Her daughter did not
share her passion for the arts and literature unfortunately. Her reading was
confined to the popular English glossies she borrowed from a circulating
library with a home delivery service. Besides this, she was an ardent Hindi
movie addict regularly watching the banal romantic fare on offer without fail
at the various neighbourhood cinema halls and buying the musical discs. She
also had a formidable collection of Hindi movie program bills and song books
that used to be sold in the movie halls of the time – worth a fortune in the
memorabilia market today by the way. Unfortunately, it got lost owing to
neglect and lack of foresight. </span></div>
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<b><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The Mankars
do well for themselves.</span></i></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> Aai’s maiden name “Manak” (or “Manik”) is the Marathi word
for ruby, a much-coveted precious stone coloured pink to blood-red. (Ujwal’s
mother, Aai’s close friend and confidante, kept addressing her by that name
even in later life.) After marriage she was, according to the custom
re-christened “Laxmi” after the Hindu Goddess of Prosperity and Wealth. She
seemed to live up to her new name as she entered Baba’s life. He prospered in
Government service and made enough money and more to support his cousins and
nephews and nieces, all part of his extended family. Also, following his
Pathare Prabhu predilection once again, he built a house for his family in
Prabhu Nagar, Khar, a Western suburb just beyond Bandra served by the BBCI (now
Western) Railways, where a lot of Pathare Prabhus were already shifting. My
guess is that he must have done it with his own savings because I doubt if bank
loans for housing were then offered as freely and avidly as at present. All
this must have added to his stature both in his professional and personal life.
As usual, life had to add an ironical twist in the story. Baba was named after
Waman, the fifth reincarnation of Lord Vishnu, a diminutive hero with a
generous heart who vanquished King Bali, the ruler of the three worlds. </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://bit.ly/1xNCVmJ"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">http://bit.ly/1xNCVmJ</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> and </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://bit.ly/ZLWKwH"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">http://bit.ly/ZLWKwH</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> In fact, he stood tall at
5’-8” or so. No doubt, the commonality between him and his fabled namesake was
only in deeds. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Enemy
within.</span></i></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> Unfortunately though not unexpectedly, there lurked among Baba’s near
and dear relatives – the very ones he had sheltered munificently − a bunch of
wily demons akin to the <i>rakshasas</i>
from his namesake’s universe. A maternal uncle and his family laid a squatter’s
claim to his Khar bunglow because he had allowed them to reside there. The
sentimental fool that he was, Baba chose to let go of the property quietly
instead of proving ownership in a court of law. (Come to think of it, although law
was his profession, I had heard him on several occasions advising people to
shun the courts and the lawyers.) He, however, broke off all ties with that
branch of his family except for a distant cousin of his (Sunder Nayak,
nicknamed Kanikaka) who worked for the Hongkong & Shanghai Banking Corporation (now HSBC) and who,
along with his wife (known to me only as “Kaku” = aunty), was devoted to both
Aai and Baba. In fact, so close was the couple to my parents that the weddings
of two of their three daughters took place at 233 Khetwadi Main Road. What’s
more, when my cousin Suresh, the son of Kanikaka and Kaku, chose to marry a
non-Prabhu girl, my parents sided with his parents who were staunchly against
the marriage in spite of the fact that they were very fond of and close to their
nephew (he called Baba "bhaukaka" which literally means "bother uncle" and Aai, "Kakibai") and broad-minded enough to realize that the days of scrupulously staying
within the caste boundaries were numbered at least in the urban areas. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The wards’
fate. </span></i></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In
Aai and Baba’s charge and under their care, besides their own daughter, were
two of Baba’s nieces, Nalini and Sarojani, who respectfully addressed them with
the honorifics ‘Kakibai’ and ‘Kakaji’. Both of them, as far as my recollection
goes, were treated by my parents as daughters of the family on a par with the
real daughter – although the latter saw the situation in a different light and
took every opportunity to display her displeasure. Of the two wards, Nalini was
the more gifted academically. She completed her graduation from the Elphinstone
College along with her cousin who too excelled in academics. Unfortunately,
Nalini was married off in 1939 or thereabouts to a Rationing Office employee –
much below her intellectual stature − and ended up as a forlorn housewife. Even
after sixty years of a futile existence, her mind had lost none of its original
sharpness, though. In a get-together in the mid-nineties at Ashu’s in-laws, we
were astonished to hear her conversing fluently in French with a youngster from
France who happened to be one of the invitees. Nalini, I think, was also a
trained <i>dilruba</i> player though I don’t
remember ever hearing her playing it. Her less talented and plain-looking
sibling, Sarojani, took lessons in singing and sewing but did not seem to have
got anywhere in either field. She was married to a decent enough though far
from successful man at the same time as her sister. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Down with
the Khetwadi Mankars.</span></i></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> Hindsight tells me that the real tragedy of Nalini was that
she was married off willy-nilly into a large joint family headed by a matriarch
with five sons living on the Antop Hill, Wadala. Nalini’s husband was the
youngest of the brood. The wife of the second eldest son, a moderately
successful lawyer by profession, was the eldest daughter of Aai’s elder brother
residing opposite the Roxy Cinema (please see above). (The Elder Ajinkya’s
progeny comprised one son and two daughters.) This worthy – the great pretender
that she was – professed profound love and affection for Aai in her presence while
secretly envying her good fortune and good life and, more particularly, the
success of her husband and, in consequence, despising her and the Mankar family
in the bargain and being always on the lookout for a chance to “fix” the
accursed lot. She was not alone in this pursuit. Her own husband, her sister
(much better educated than her but her match, stride for stride, as far as
skullduggery went) and the latter’s solicitor husband – a doppelganger of Justice
Strauss from Lemony Snicket’s <i>A Series of
Unfortunate Events</i> saga in terms of his deeds and thoughts − as well as
Aai’s own younger sister and the wife and the elder son of Aai’s second brother
(actually third, I think – the second one, an Indian Army physician, having migrated
to England during World War I) were all a part of the secret
down-with-the-Khetwadi-Mankars clique. The scenario happened to be no less
sudsy than the convoluted soaps currently doing the rounds in assorted Indian
languages on the idiot box.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Self-deluded.</span></i></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> My poor, innocent,
trusting Aai played into the hands of the villains without fail on several
occasions, the only exception being her firm and unshakable resolve to have
Ujwal as her daughter-in-law. In Nalini’s case, she deluded herself into believing
that her niece would protect her own ward in the virtual snake pit she was
being shoved into – relying on her blind faith in people on her own maternal
side (= <i>maaher</i> in Marathi; <i>mahike</i> in Hindi). As the saying goes,
there’s no delusion more lethal than self-delusion. My mother must have
realized later on that she had made a grave mistake in Nalini’s case. Yet, she
repeated it toward the end of her life. The elder son of her third brother had
been caught red-handed in the commission of graft at the Airport in the late
fifties. Again deluding herself into believing in his innocence when his
propensity to take bribe was more or less an open secret – the big bunglow he
had built in West Bandra was cited by many as a pointer to his not-so-clean
hands – she insisted that Baba should “save” him through his many
“connections”. He, being the way he was, flatly refused. One thing led to
another and they drifted apart, stopped talking to each other. This wall of
silence remained in place right till her death in 1962. The
down-with-the-Khetwadi-Mankars clique had drawn blood twice over!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Two
weddings, a nagging worry and a misadventure. </span></i></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">But that was far away in the future.
Coming back to the aftermath of the weddings of the two wards of Aai and Baba,
they were relieved to have done their duty <i>in
loco parentis</i>, i.e., as foster parents, by arranging what they considered
as a suitable match for each of the duo in (I guess) 1941 when I had just
turned five and we were then living on the first floor of 233 Khetwadi Main Road.
The lavish weddings were held in the spacious hall on the ground floor of
Vanita Vishram School next door to 233 Khetwadi Main Road and the reception in
the garden behind it. The school, by the way, is still very much there doing
its job although there are no more weddings held on the premises, as far as I
can tell.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Meanwhile,
frenzied, near frenetic efforts were afoot to find a suitable boy for the
daughter of the house. After all, she was not growing any younger with each
passing day. Alas, all to no avail. She had by then taken up a job in the newly
opened Rationing Office situated in the Jinnah Hall next to the Grant Road
Bridge within walking distance of 233 Khetwadi Main Road. This is where she
found her “true love” in the Hindi film style and I have already described at
the beginning of this piece what happened then. To keep herself occupied after
her misadventure, Malini had learned Hindi and Urdu and started doing honorary
social service by tutoring women in a women’s organization in the vicinity. It
was only in 1949 that a match was finally arranged for the Princess. Prince
Charming happened to be no other than a Lower Division Clerk in the Income Tax
Department who happened to reside quite close by. A harmless enough person who
fancied himself as an artist; he used to make miniature statuettes out of clay
and paint them quite beautifully. He was also an amateur inventor in his own
right. I remember being impressed with his system of closing the front door
from the outside with the use of nothing but a piece of strong string. (To get
the door to open later, though, you had to ring the doorbell.) Malini had fared
maybe a notch better in the marriage stakes than Nalini, the more talented
cousin she despised and whose husband was not as gifted.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Pooja,
priests and a guru.</span></i></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> Were Aai and Baba seeking their respective paths to salvation
in their own way? Aai had always been a god-fearing person given to daily
prayer, weekly <i>pooja </i>by the<i> </i>family priest on Mondays, fasting
during the month of <i>Shravan</i>, special offerings
to Lord Shiva such as <i>maharudra</i> with
eleven Brahmins presiding if so advised by the family priest or her astrologer,
a visit to a dozen Rama temples on the <i>Ramnavmi</i>
day and so forth. After her daughter’s “narrow escape from a fate worse than
death” (as she put it), she had acquired a <i>guru</i>
residing in a quaint sea-facing flat on the road along the coast leading up to
the <i>Banganga</i> and then on to the
Malabar Hills garden. And who do you think had led this guileless woman up this
particular garden path? No surprises there. It was someone from the
fix-The-Mankars clique: her younger sister-in-law whom she adored as a notable member
of her maternal family. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Marx,
Radical Humanism, Bhakti.</span></i></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> While all this was happening, my father had taken to
reading, along with his client briefs and legal reference volumes (he had
several shelves full of these tomes stacked in his makeshift home office under
a shed on the front terrace of the third-floor flat – where we had shifted by
then − at 233 Khetwadi Main Road because his criminal law practice was
thriving, thank you), MN Roy’s books about radical humanism, books about
communist thought and leaders and biographies of the saints in the <i>bhakti </i>tradition in Marathi (Tukaram,
Namdeo, Muktabai, Chokha Mela, Janabai and the like). He had also started to
chant aloud Kabir’s <i>doha</i>, Tukaram’s <i>abhang</i> and Ramdas’s <i>Manache Shloka</i> in his leisure time. By the time India became free,
he had become a near ardent fan of Nehru tracking his idol’s doings faithfully
through The Times of India reportage every morning. (Did his reading leftist
literature have anything to do with it? By the way, I have a sneaking suspicion
that, when his idol shuffled off his mortal coil on 27 May 1964, Baba shed a
tear privately.) By contrast, I saw Aai mildly excited during the Samyukta
Maharashtra movement. By the time, it ended with the formation of the new state
in 1960, her health had started failing and her interest had all but tapered
off. Aai and Baba’s first grandchild, Shubhada, was born in 1950, by the way,
the second following ten years later. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Real
affliction, “false” physician.</span></i></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> During most part of his active life as a government
servant and as a successful lawyer, Baba had been a victim of a strange malady
for which no doctor found either the right name or an effective treatment. From
time to time, he would wake up in the morning with a rash of hives all over his
upper torso and arms and a shooting pain mainly in his arms which made him cry
out and confined him to bed for a couple of days. The cretin of a family
physician under whose care he had put himself during the forties and the early
part of the fifties (that simpering abomination called himself either Dharadhar
or Dhurandhar – he too was a Pathare Prabhu, an unwelcome appendage hailing
from Baba’s early life in Navi Wadi, alas! − and lurked in a first floor flat
in the building on the corner of Burroughs Lane off Girgaum Road, if memory
serves) christened the condition “urticaria” and ordered his patient first to
eschew eggs, flesh and fish in his daily diet and then to get all his teeth
pulled out. Nothing worked. As he aged, however, the condition and the joke of
a doctor gradually waned out of his life. For as long as I knew him, Baba had
also suffered from hernia for which he used a support belt made by N Powell &
Company (Opera House).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Honour? What
honour?</span></i></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> As the forties gave way to the fifties, my father was offered out of the
blue the post of Coroner of Bombay. Without giving a thought to the likelihood
that it would be an avoidable disruption in his fledgling but thriving career
as a widely sought-out criminal lawyer, he accepted with alacrity what he
thought of as an “honour”. (Those were the days when honour scored over everything
else in most people’s calculations.) Honour it certainly was along with a puny
honorarium which made a serious dent in Baba’s already unsound and untenable finances.
There was another unexpected setback, too. In a no-holds-barred judgment on one
of the cases he had to administer, the new but politically inept Coroner of
Bombay passed strictures on the admission procedure of accident victims then
prevalent in Sir Harkisondas Narottamdas Hospital. The Hospital had by then
acquired the ownership of 233 Khetwadi Main Road which more or less abutted
their own campus. Baba’s strictures so incensed the Trustees of the Hospital
that they vowed to “fix the <i>ghati</i>
Coroner once and for all”. Their very first offensive was to shift the
hospital’s morgue to the store room at the rear on the ground floor of 233
Khetwadi Main Road. This meant that many a funeral procession guest-featuring
loudly wailing and chest-pounding hired mourners originated from the front gate
of our building. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Kashmir
works its magic.</span></i></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> I passed my Secondary School Certificate examination in 1952
and enrolled in the Sydenham College for the Bachelor of Commerce course. After
appearing for the Intermediate examination in April 1954, I went on a packaged
tour of Jammu and Kashmir. There were only two tourists on this tour apart from
me: Ujwal and Saroj or “Tamma”, Kanikaka’s youngest daughter and my
cousin. The tour would have been
cancelled for lack of sufficient paying customers but for Kanikaka’s intervention
with the tour conductor who happened to be his close friend. So the tour
happened and so did the closeness between Ujwal and me. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Not IAS,
FMC.</span></i></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">
In 1956, I completed my B. Com. Course and enrolled for a Masters degree in
Public Economics by research in the RA Podar College in Matunga. Baba wanted me
to join the Indian Administrative Services. So, I sat for the test twice
passing the written component both times but flunking the interview. However, I
managed to pass in 1959 the Masters with an excellent report from my examiners
for my voluminous 654-page research tome and joined the Forward Markets
Commission, Government of India. In the meantime, Aai had decided that Ujwal
was <i>the</i> wife for her son – in the
face of serious and voluble opposition from her own daughter and the
down-with-the-Khetwadi-Mankars clique. She talked to Baba and he was more than
willing. So, in 1959, on Jesus Christ’s birthday, wedding rituals and reception
were held at the Laxmi Narayan Temple off Hughes Road.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Down in the
dumps.</span></i></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">
After the uncalled-for interruption in my father’s successful career as a
criminal lawyer during his stint as Coroner of Bombay, his practice never
recovered to its previous level. (I got a personal glimpse in Baba’s courtroom
skills when he defended me in a traffic offence matter. It came about in this
fashion. In either 1953 or 1954, having just got my driving license, I was just
about a fledgling, somewhat hesitant driver. One morning, I was driving Baba to
the High Court at Flora Fountain before going to college. Baba was sitting next
to me and our chauffeur was in the back seat. Driving along New Queen’s Road,
now Parmanand Marg, just as the family Renault reached the Churchgate junction
and was about to take the then free left turn to go to Flora Fountain, there
was much shouting heard from the front seat of an unmarked Police vehicle
coming from Marine Drive and going our way. The alarm was apparently raised by
a top Police functionary – probably the Commissioner or Assistant Commission, I
never found out which – who made me pull the Renault to the left of the road
and took down all my particulars and confiscated my driving license. Our
explanation fell on deaf ears because he was thoroughly convinced that there
was no free left turn and that I had broken the law. He threatened to sue me
and did carry out the threat. When the case came for hearing, Baba really
demolished the officer who was put on the witness stand. The poor fellow was
aware of the existence of the free left turn and admitted as much to the Judge
who passed strictures about wasting the Court’s valuable time. So, it was
actually a walkover. And, it put paid to my life as a notorious law breaker –
and also to the free left turn at Churchgate!) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Baba’s
finances were in the doldrums by the time I had started earning a measly salary
not at all sizeable enough to bridge the yawning chasm that had opened up in
the family fortune. Baba used to also do all along a lot of <i>pro bono</i> work − at times even when it
was not called for, strictly speaking. He had made a lot of bad investments along
the way including a major one in a rundown property in a supposedly residential
compound in Vile Parle with a bunglow illegally used as first as a manufactory
of and later as a warehouse for medicinal products, a one-storey tenement and
three temporary structures. He had thought of it as a source of steady monthly
income in his old age. It turned out to be a quite a headache and a drain on
his already meagre resources. As a Trustee of Pathare Prabhu Charities, he
spent quite a bit of his time and, at several occasions, even money on
thankless honorary pursuits. (Perhaps, he saw it in terms of “giving back to
the society”. His valuable contribution was never sufficiently appreciated by
his community, though.) A chain smoker during most of his middle age, he had
quit cigarettes around the same time he turned vegetarian. Every Sunday,
though, a group of seven or eight of his bezique-playing friends gathered in
the terrace flat at 233 Khetwadi Main Road. Moreover, once a month, another
group – contract bridge players this time – assembled at the same address and
was lavishly entertained by the generous host. Baba was always mindful of the
comfort and well-being of his family. The 233 Khetwadi Main Road Mankars lived
well. We had a car even before I was born. (A maroon-and-black Wolseley Wasp it
was till around 1948, then making way for a red Renault that served the family
till the early sixties.) Also, we must have been among the first few families
in the Khetwadi precinct to own a pressure cooker, a top-of-the-line wireless
set and a refrigerator as early as the beginning of the 1950s. Baba also gladly
and willingly bought toys and books for me whenever I “wrote him a note” when
he left for work. The family (more often than not for the extended family) summered
in Matheran and Mahabaleshwar as a rule till almost the mid-fifties. Once, probably in 1941, the Mankars went as far south as Madras in the company of some members of the down-with-the-Mankars goon squad. (In retrospect,
I guess the Mankars were aping the <i>goras</i> who used to summer regularly at Simla, Darjeeling, Srinagar and “snooty Ooty”. I
distinctly remember travelling with several trunks and canvas bedrolls or
“beddings” which one doesn’t see any more on railways platforms or in the brake
vans.) Even these minor (and sometimes not so minor) but regular expenses, his
thoughtless handouts to all and sundry whiners and supplicants and money spent
on the maintenance of the aging family car and the chauffeur played havoc with
the Mankar Family’s cash cache. Things came to such a head that when my mother
was hospitalized for leukemia more than once in 1961-62, Baba had no other
option to tide over the financial crisis except to sell some of the family
jewelry. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Nine yards
of resolve.</span></i></b><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">When Ujwal resumed her
college education at the Sophia immediately after her wedding, she scrupulously
followed the dress code for a newly married woman according to her mother-in-law’s
wishes. Her astonished and much amused classmates teased her for attending
college in a nine-yard saree and ornaments. Peer pressure was no match for her exemplary
resolve, though. She also patiently learned to cook Pathare Prabhu cuisine in
the special Mankar style. She wasn’t doing it to earn brownie points, by the
way. It was in her nature to behave in this fashion especially with people who
gave her love and respect as whole-heartedly as Aai and Baba did. So deeply
attached had she become to her mother-in-law that she looked after her almost
single-handedly throughout her last lingering illness waiting on her hand and
foot and attending to all her needs from bathing to feeding with an eagle eye
and an alert mind. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<b><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The fault lines begin to show.</span></i></b><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">All throughout, Aai and Baba had been a devoted couple, as
far as my memory and “inside information” go. I remember them rising to each
other’s defence if a third part questioned either’s intentions, motives or
actions. If I said a cross word to Aai in his presence, Baba would chide me
gently in a pained tone of voice. Isn’t there a saying “Whom the gods would
destroy they first make mad”? Something similar happened to Aai at the fag end
of her life. She insisted that Baba should use his contacts to “shield” her
maternal nephew from the dire consequences of the serious misdemeanor he had
committed in his place of work. (Please see above.) As a leverage device, she
chose the weapon of silence. In other words, she stopped talking to Baba until
he was forced to oblige. Unfortunately, he chose to retaliate in like manner.
The Cold War was on. It ended with Aai’s death in the Bombay Hospital when only
Ujwal was with her and no one else from the close family. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">During her last illness, Aai’s own
daughter had pleaded her inability to care for her ailing mother or at least
help in the process saying she had just delivered her second daughter who took
all her time. But this did not prevent her from hounding and harassing Ujwal
immediately after Aai’s death when she and her henchwomen, prominent among whom
were some members of the anti-Mankar clique, kept visiting her in the
afternoons on the pretext of supervising her progress during pregnancy. </span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Once,
when Ujwal was alone at home in the afternoon with Baba and I out on work and
Ujwal’s trusted maid out on an errand, she demanded her share of the family
jewels from Ujwal. Ujwal quietly gave her the keys of the cupboard that her
father-in-law had recently handed over to her and watched as she plundered at
random some of the gold ornaments and silver stuff. The daughter of the house
even had the audacity to snatch away the Clyde bicycle that had been gifted to
her brother by one of Baba’s friend cum client, a certain Mr Kazarani. Ujwal
did not burden her father-in-law with the latest news because she did not want
to hurt him. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The last merry lap with two
grandsons.</span></i></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> Baba survived Aai by a little under 3 years. In that short spell, he
enjoyed what Aai had hoped for but missed by a whisker as it were: playing with
the grandsons, singing ditties to them and spoiling them silly. He also made a
Last Will and Codicil dividing his property according to his wishes. That it
was challenged in the court of law after his death was inevitable. By whom and
at whose instigation are open secrets. The irony of it all was that when the
bunglow in Khar Baba had built with the sweat of his brow was snatched from him
by his own kith and kin, he did not see it fit to file a law suit. As soon as
he had left this world, his own kith and kin made sure history repeated itself.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Does every life story come with a
built-in moral? I don’t think I can answer the question. Did I learn anything
from the lives of my parents? Well, maybe all I relearned was the cliché that
bad things keep happening to good people. It’s, I suppose, all a manifestation
of what Buddha called <i>samsara</i>: the
human condition full of grief (<i>dukkha</i>)
and strife, frustration and pain, the result of “attachment, craving and the
refusal to accept impermanence”. Life happens in a circular continuum, I guess.
It reassures us that<i> even this</i> shall
pass. Reality shows on the idiot box and the assorted villains peopling them are
not a patch on reality shows and villains in real life, I dare say. At first
glance, every life looks like a lost cause. After a bit of thought, one begins
to feel not quite so cocksure. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Deepak Mankarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16135017690358976557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27462576.post-66256740771340945602014-10-14T03:14:00.000-07:002014-10-14T03:14:47.872-07:00UFO Sightings. (UFO as in Unexpected Foreign Object.)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Jeffrey Bernard is not everyone’s cup
of tea. Or, more appropriately in his case, peg of Smirnoff. I was pointed to
him by an erstwhile “friend of the family” who urged me to buy a copy of <i>Low Life</i> which, in case you didn’t know,
is a collection of Bernard’s weekly columns in The Spectator, <i>circa</i> the late eighties. After I had done
enjoying my mint-condition copy of <i>Low
Life</i> and gushing high praise for Bernard all over the place, the aforesaid
FOTF proceeded to “borrow” it promising prompt return thereof. I kept asking
him for it and he kept unleashing a torrent of excuses to hold me at bay. Not
only that. He kept borrowing more books from me – a notable one being Laura
Hillenbrand’s breathtakingly brilliant <i>Seabiscuit
An American Legend</i> </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://bit.ly/1qlHT2i"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">http://bit.ly/1qlHT2i</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> −<i> </i>and also borrowed my contacts to break into advertising. Funny
business, advertising. It willingly welcomes frauds and fakes and liars of
every ilk and description, even generously endowing them with success. But
unmasking faux friends is not the object of this post. Friends, Indians and
countrymen, we are here to bury old musty, smelly, contemptible memories and
praise Bernard fulsomely. All of which brings us to the “objects” hanging up
there in the headline of this post. Poor Jeffrey was in the habit of
discovering on the morning after unexpected foreign objects on his person. A
paper clip in his pubic hair. The remains of last night’s Chinese takeaway in
the pocket of his blazer. And, so on and so forth till the fat lady sings or
the cows come home. You get the general idea? He also was a fanatic about
overspending as well as adept at getting into trouble with the Internal Revenue
and VAT people − and that too during Mrs Thatcher’s regime. What’s more, he
excelled at backing the wrong horses ignoring his inner voice and marrying the
(only for him) wrong women. Also, he kept popping in and out of hospitals
whenever his body could stand the daily abuse no more and rebelled violently. All
through his troubles, though, he kept on plodding somehow to the winning post (if
you can call it that) dodging the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune (to
borrow an apt but all too frequently quoted turn of phrase from The Prince of
Denmark’s Nunnery Scene (<i>Hamlet</i>, Act
III, Scene I) and laughing his head off maniacally all the way to the Pay Out
window. Graham Greene once confessed that he had “never once been bored by
Jeffrey Bernard. If that is not high praise, then there’s John Osborne dubbing
him “the Tony Hancock of journalism”. For the life of me, I didn’t know Tony
Hancock from Adam until I googled the bloke. Then I found out that he was a popular
British comedian on radio and TV in the fifties and sixties. He was the guy who
said: “I don’t want any publicity − you get too many begging letters. If they’re
anything like the ones I send out, I don’t want to know!” That sounds very
Groucho-like. Meanwhile, excuse my ignorance. A man can’t be an encyclopedia
but now he can pretend to be one if he has a laptop and an Internet connection
or a smart phone. Bernard knew quite a bit about quite a few things, though.
How he found the time and energy to stay so well-informed after making his
presence felt at Coach and Horses, the renowned public house in Soho, twice a
day, occasional appearances at assorted race courses in Britain and elsewhere,
sponsored work-related jaunts abroad and partying several times a week in
addition to writing his weekly column for <i>The
Spectator </i>I shall never know. Apart from his self-deprecating sense of
humour – a typically British character trait even more archetypal than the
stiff upper lip of the British Raj, I reckon – whatever he wrote, often (I
suspect) in a vodka-induced daze, seemed to flow out of his electric typewriter
so utterly spontaneously, so effortlessly that I am envious every time I read
him. And, I seldom am that otherwise, mind you. Moreover, once good ol’ Bernard
turns berserkly bellicose as, for instance, when he is incensed at one of his
pet hates like “a nut called Andrea Dworkin”, he is in his elements. Nothing
short of total demolition would work for him. Meanwhile, having lost all hope
of owning a freshly minted copy of <i>Low
Life</i>, I was slowly sinking into a mire of depression until good ol’ Dadabhai
Naoroji Road (formerly Hornby Road) <a href="http://bit.ly/1nkeGZB">http://bit.ly/1nkeGZB</a>
came to my rescue with bugles blowing and both guns blazing. One enchanted
afternoon in the late nineties, a copy of the sequel, <i>More Low Life</i>, in “good” condition lying half-hidden in a pile in
front of a pavement book vendor caught my eye. From then till now, I must have read
and re-read it at least half a dozen times. And, I have been doubly cautious
about whom I lend it to, even whom I boast about owing it to. You never know
whom to trust anymore. Meanwhile, the erstwhile FOTF has managed to extract a
sizeable bounty in kind out of Honourable Number Two Son (whom Charlie Chan
would have described as “expensively educated offspring”) before breaking off
all links with the Mankars. Well, well, c’est la vie! No kidding even with kids
around.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Deepak Mankarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16135017690358976557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27462576.post-74149260877365684172014-09-03T20:17:00.000-07:002014-09-03T20:17:29.758-07:00What’s in a name? A lot, it looks like.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I
read The Wrap for entertainment news, Hollywood movies and TV stuff. Read and
forget – that’s my usual routine. But this Wrap rap <a href="http://bit.ly/Z6qPXa">http://bit.ly/Z6qPXa</a> did catch my eye
instantly. There, we had Sharon Waxman, a former New York Times columnist,
waxing eloquently and flinging a provocative challenge at The New York Times: “Hey,
New York Times ‘Vows’ Section: Who Cares If ‘The Bride is Keeping Her Name'?” (For a moment, it made me think of the good ol’
“Hark, who goes there?” routine.) Her bone of contention is the venerable
newspaper making it a point to mention without fail in its Vows coverage that
all the brides were keeping their respective maiden surnames. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">At
the height of the Feminist Movement, brides wore their maiden surnames as a
badge of honour, you’ll recall. Later on, it became a matter of unstated
routine, also a matter of convenience. Women started marrying later and later
in life. By then they had kind of got accustomed to their original moniker. Also,
career reasons as well as the long legal rigmarole involved in acquiring a new
name may prompt the refusal to disturb the status quo. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Waxman’s
target, though, seems to be the paper she worked for earlier. She points a finger
at their boast about being the first to report same-sex nuptials. She would
have preferred if her former employer had included significant details such as
a Caucasian woman marrying an Afro-American or human interest tidbits such as
the bride having lost 50 pounds of weight on her way to the church podium. And,
so forth.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">This
is 2014. And, in the US of A, this issue is still being discussed. Will wonders
never cease to pop up?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Deepak Mankarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16135017690358976557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27462576.post-39848327360423665542014-08-29T20:12:00.000-07:002014-08-29T20:14:00.296-07:00The Evil That Men Do. (We Indians are like that only.)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">True tale. No names.<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">This story about masculine hegemony is from the
seventies. It was told to me a while back by an erstwhile colleague from one of
the ad agencies I worked for in those days. He happens to be a friend I am in off-and-on
touch with even today. He was one of the two witnesses to the event.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Q: Why am I telling it now? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">A: Because I came across it recently. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Q: Who does it concern? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">A: One of my late (in every sense of the word) bosses
for whom I used to have and still have tremendous respect as an advertising
professional. He was highly regarded in the Indian and international Management
Studies circles as well, by the way.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Q: Can I vouch for the veracity of the “story”?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">A: I can vouch for the credibility of the source.
Also, in the light of what I had heard on the workplace grapevine at that time
but discarded as idle gossip, probability dons the sinister cloak of
possibility. Moreover another friend with whom I have lost touch used to be a
frequent head office visitor to the Bombay office around the time the event
presumably took place and used to lodge at the boss’s apartment situated in a
tony locality of the city. He too had dropped hints in passing about the
dysfunctional family life with the head of the family always at loggerheads
with his wife but a doting father to his daughter who was schooling at an
upper-crust day school. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Q: So what is supposed to have happened, for Pete’s
sake?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">A: The boss
used to travel a lot on work and also his teaching engagements. One evening,
the car picked him up at the airport and on its way back home took the Tulsi
Pipe Road (now Senapati Bapat Marg) route. This road runs parallel to the
Western Railway tracks. This was much before the three flyovers were built. All
along the road were makeshift hutments out of some of which hooch was sold and
flesh trade was plied. In other word, it was hardly the road on which to stroll
leisurely after sunset. As the Big Man’s car was speeding along the not too brightly
lit road, there suddenly flared up an altercation between the boss and the
missus who had gone to receive him at the airport. Things took such an ugly
turn after a while that the boss asked the chauffeur to stop the car and
ordered the missus to step out. She had no alternative but to obey. No sooner had
she stepped out of the car than the boss asked the chauffeur to start the car
and head home. As to how and when she managed to reach home, my informant had
no clue.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Q: So what’s the point of the tattletale-ing
excursion?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">A: If you’re expecting an outburst dripping with angst
about clay-footed idols, perish the thought pronto. The only probable moral of
the story to my way of thinking right here and now is expressed eloquently by Shakespeare’s
famous words (<i>Julius Caesar</i>, Act III,
Scene ii, Line 190): <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 188.0pt; text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 188.0pt; text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">“O, what a fall was there,
my countrymen!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 188.0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Then I, and you, and all
of us fell down…”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Though averse to joining in community breast-beating
and dirge-chanting, I shall make an exception in the present case and include
myself – purely for old time’s sake − in this group mourning the fall from
grace of a well-heeled, highly educated, cultured (or, gentrified?) Indian gentleman
holding a top well-paying job in a leading ad agency and residing in one of the
poshest pockets of Bombay (now Mumbai) because he behaved exactly like a
denizen of the shanties abutting the Tulsi Pipe Road once his male ego and
authority were challenged in the presence of witnesses. When the shanty dweller
drove his wife out of their hovel, she was still allowed to remain in a familiar
neighbourhood and could probably find a temporary refuge with a friendly
neighbour until things cooled down. The boss’s missus was abandoned in an unknown,
totally alien and most likely dangerous territory to fend for herself – a
situation straight out of a Hollywood <i>noir</i>
of the early fifties (Barbara Stanwyck and Richard Widmark, remember?). Good
grief, Charlie Brown! Can we not tell the Red Baron to fly his Sopwith Camel
real low and mow down such scum from the face of the earth? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">False middle-class values. Don’t we all cling to them
even after half suspecting how very hollow they are just because they seem
congruent with the current benchmarks of belief and behaviour? They make us pose
like judges even in matters where we have no jurisdiction, so to speak. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">So, ladies and gentlemen, who will step up to fling
the first stone?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</div>
Deepak Mankarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16135017690358976557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27462576.post-60714160612668508572014-08-22T20:20:00.000-07:002014-08-22T20:20:12.450-07:00Mirror, mirror on the wall. Whose statue is due for a fall?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I’m not much of a “let’s have one more statue” guy, no
matter whose or how tall. (In my humble opinion, the proper place for statuary
and paintings is a museum.) What intrigues me, though, about Dr Kusoom Vadgama’s
objection to one more Gandhi statue in London </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://bit.ly/1rGUo9P"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">http://bit.ly/1rGUo9P</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> is the reason she uses as
a prop: the inscrutable ol’ man’s obsession with sex and, particularly, his
making much younger close relatives of the opposite sex the guinea pigs of his
experiment with celibacy. (Once again, in my humble opinion, a simple
one-too-many-statues objection would suffice.) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The Gandhian credentials of the currently irascible Kenya-born,
Illinois-educated, London-based and musically inclined Optometrist and
Historian are impeccable. That she has suddenly woken up to Gandhi’s cryptic sexual
behaviour and preference for naked female companionship of young relatives is
therefore a bit puzzling. The insensitive, self-righteous, eccentric and
erratic old man </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://bit.ly/XBGSvA"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">http://bit.ly/XBGSvA</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> had no qualms when logging
in reports of his experiments in <i>Harijan.</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The other thing that intrigues me about the good
Doctor is that, in spite of her historian’s insight into the worldwide feminist
movement, she merely mentions Gandhi’s use of young women who were close
relations as “guinea pigs” in his <i>maha
yagna </i>(his fanciful nomenclature for "brahmacharya"/celibacy
experiments). Dr Sushila Nayyar, his physician, personal masseur and off-and-on
bed sharer, once told Ved Mehta that "brahmacharya" was a latter-day
invention of Gandhi to ward off criticism of his interaction with his female
intimates. Earlier, before Nayyar in her late teens went to medical school, she
used to be his bed mate for reasons of nature cure. </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://bit.ly/LWXS2N"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">http://bit.ly/LWXS2N</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">One reason for Gandhi making Manu and Abha his bed mates
could be easy accessibility as also their willingness to serve him no matter
what. The other, most likely, was the power he knew he had over them as the
patriarch of the family. Patriarchy and masculine hegemony, as is well-accepted
by now, are the main culprits responsible for the continuing subjugation of
women in India. Incest −</span><!--[if gte msEquation 12]><m:oMath><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:14.0pt;
line-height:115%;font-family:"Cambria Math","serif"'><m:r> </m:r></span></i></m:oMath><![endif]--><!--[if !msEquation]--><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-text-raise: -5.5pt; position: relative; top: 5.5pt;"><v:shapetype coordsize="21600,21600" filled="f" id="_x0000_t75" o:preferrelative="t" o:spt="75" path="m@4@5l@4@11@9@11@9@5xe" stroked="f">
<v:stroke joinstyle="miter">
<v:formulas>
<v:f eqn="if lineDrawn pixelLineWidth 0">
<v:f eqn="sum @0 1 0">
<v:f eqn="sum 0 0 @1">
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</v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:formulas>
<v:path gradientshapeok="t" o:connecttype="rect" o:extrusionok="f">
<o:lock aspectratio="t" v:ext="edit">
</o:lock></v:path></v:stroke></v:shapetype><v:shape id="_x0000_i1025" style="height: 18.75pt; width: 3pt;" type="#_x0000_t75">
<v:imagedata chromakey="white" o:title="" src="file:///C:\Users\DEEPAK~1\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_image001.png">
</v:imagedata></v:shape></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">and paedophilia − are the pathological (deviant) offshoots of patriarchy.
Normal men tend to be protectors while deviant men, predators. Sometimes, a
patriarch may inadvertently cross the line between the two roles back and forth
harbouring ambivalent feelings towards women.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Do read Girja Kumar's <i>BRAHMACHARYA Gandhi & His Women Associates</i>. In this book based
mostly on Gandhi’s writings. “… the so-called Mahatma comes out as
manipulative, pathologically obsessive about sex and sin as well as
power-crazed. His logic sounds circuitous, serpentine and often
self-contradictory and specious, at times even inane. He apparently played God
with the lives of those close to him. He was too intrusive and interfering.” <a href="http://bit.ly/LWXS2N">http://bit.ly/LWXS2N</a> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I have noticed that when it comes to writing or
talking about the Father of the Nation, even normally sane and balanced people lose
their nerve. They start to tread overcautiously as it they were walking on
eggshells. Finally the ex-Gandhian good Doctor has spoken the so far unspoken.
That’s a good beginning, methinks.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br /></div>
Deepak Mankarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16135017690358976557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27462576.post-13605334870740207832014-08-19T21:58:00.000-07:002014-08-19T21:58:04.312-07:00In search of lost time: Remembrance of Govindas past.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I am talking here of the late forties to the early sixties,
mind you. Life lived at and observed from the third-floor terrace flat at 233
Khetwadi Main Road. <a href="http://bit.ly/1fcggIG">http://bit.ly/1fcggIG</a> Govindas
in those days were straggly, motley cavalcades of (mostly) domestic servants (“<i>rama gadis</i>”) working in South Bombay and
a sprinkling of textile mill workers all of them belonging to friend circles (“<i>mitra mandals</i>”) of migrants from the Kokan
region. They lived in low-rent tenements (“<i>chawls</i>”)
in South and Central Bombay, for instance, in Girgaum (Thakurdwar, Mughbhat), Tardeo,
Worli, Byculla, Parel and Lalbaug (what was collectively called <i>Girangaon</i> or Mill Town) using a single
room as an all-bachelor, all-expenses-shared chummery sort of communal living
space. Some of them worked in shifts in the mills; in their absence those not
working at that time used the room to rest. For recreation, these groups sang
in <i>bhajan mandals</i>, danced in groups
and even rehearsed for plays. Out of these extracurricular pastimes arose the
Govinda troupes, the Gauri-Ganapati dance groups and amateur play-staging
groups. These migrant workers also went to the local gyms (“<i>akhadas</i>”) and played group sports like <i>kabaddi</i> and <i>kho-kho</i>. I remember watching a group <i>rama gadis</i> clad in colourful waists and shorts waving red
handkerchiefs and dancing in honour of Goddess Gauri on the spacious terrace of
233 Khetwadi Main Road in (most probably) 1949 and 1950. The Mankars then used
to host a three-day Gauri sojourn <a href="http://bit.ly/1vfvEIh">http://bit.ly/1vfvEIh</a>
at that address, you see. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Gokulashtami</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">, the day the Govinda groups
went around breaking <i>dahi handis </i>all
over town, was a day no domestic servant or mill worker went to work. A typical
Govinda troupe used to have twenty to thirty members who danced, pranced and
swayed to the music played by a <i>sanai</i>
player and a <i>tasha </i>beater all the way
to the <i>handi </i>they had been invited to
break. The signature tune was “<i>Govinda
alaa rey alla</i>”, a kind of a playful warning about the Govinda approaching
to plunder the <i>handi</i>. The <i>handis</i>, hung at a reasonable height,<i> </i>were “sponsored” by the residents of various
localities, building or housing society – not by politicians or the local <i>mafiasos</i>. Naturally, the prize money did
not run into lakhs or thousands. The top figures were at the most in hundreds. For
the troupes, it was a labour of love.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">A major attraction for the spectators crowding the
balconies and terraces to watch the show was the opportunity to drench the
Govinda pyramid with buckets of water once the <i>handi</i> was broken. Water wasn’t scarce in Bombay of yore. In
anticipation of the Govindas, a few extra buckets would be dutifully stored on the
morning of <i>Gokulashtami</i>. My guess is
that the drenching custom must have been an offshoot of the story about the <i>Gopis</i> (dairy maids) of Gokul who loved Krishna,
the divine toddler, with their heart and soul devising various playful and
harmless ways to stop him from stealing the butter stored in the <i>handi</i> in the kitchen. The dancing group
ritual resembles the <i>warkari</i>
cavalcade of devotees merrily singing the praises of <i>Vithoba</i> and dancing with glee all the way to Pandharpur before the
advent of the <i>ekasashi </i>(the eleventh
day of the full moon cycle) in the months of <i>Ashadh</i> and <i>Kartik</i>. All
this is a part of the <i>vaishnav bhakti </i>tradition
as far as I can tell. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Come 1963 and one of my fellow residents in the
Khetwadi neighbourhood <a href="http://bit.ly/1AwRSs1">http://bit.ly/1AwRSs1</a>
forever changed this erstwhile subaltern celebration of the Krishna legend into
a boisterous garish commercially-fuelled parody of its earlier avatar having
completely stripped it of its original innocence. That was the year when
Manmohan Desai’s <i>Bluff Master </i>featuring
the Govinda signature tune suitably distorted to fit the mould of crass Hindi
film lyrics was released. So bent was Desai on fully exploiting (what he
probably shrewdly sensed to be) the commercial potential of the song that he
hired Shammi Kapoor, the quintessential <i>pucca</i>
<i>Punjabi munda</i>, to star in the movie
and inject crude Punjabi machismo in what was earlier sung as an innocent and
playful ditty celebrating Krishna’s childhood pranks. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The release of <i>Bluff
Master</i> had caught the tide of fortune at the floods. Soon, everyone and his
uncle (politicos and mafiasos included) wanted to ride the Govinda Alaa bandwagon to stay in the public gaze. The same
logic swelled the sponsorship coffers for the <i>Sarvajanik Ganesh Utsavs</i> (community celebration of the Ganesh
festival). The latter got a further fillip when <i>Hum Se Badhkar Kaun</i> hit the cinema halls in 1981 featuring the hit
song “<i>Deva Ho Deva</i>”. In fact, such
was the popularity of this song, that its inclusion became <i>de rigueur</i> in the Ganesh festival and immersion musical repertoire.
Now <i>handis</i> were hung at daunting and
competitive heights as the prize amounts continued to balloon. Also, the
practice of Bollywood celebrities visiting various Ganesh pandals became a part
of the routine with media groups footing the bill and making full use of the
photo opportunities. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The next decade saw the advent of motorized Govindas
(no more dancing cavalcades, thank you!).They operated like hard-core hit
squads swiftly moving from one target <i>handi</i>
to the next in order to maximize the day’s “take” with the prize money offered
by some <i>handi </i>sponsors already
hovering around a lakh of rupees or more.<i>
</i>The hit squads had their own portable music systems playing Bollywood hits at
ear-splitting volume. In the clamour and glitz and glamour, who would recall
the Govindas of the past? And, by then, who cared in any case? <b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</div>
Deepak Mankarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16135017690358976557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27462576.post-92081501250133998672014-05-18T16:49:00.000-07:002015-03-20T18:46:33.362-07:00Is the original Idea of India dead once and for all?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The other day, when I was thinking of
this whole rigmarole called the Idea of India, one question that had never
occurred to me in the past suddenly bobbed up its inquisitive head in my mind.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Who invented the Idea of India as a Democratic
Republic in the first place?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Taking
a long backward look, the answer became obvious. It was a coterie of eminent
Indians that included Harrow-educated Jawaharlal Nehru and Dt BR Ambedkar, a
Columbia alumnus. It was this league of extraordinary gentlemen who chiseled and
buffed the somewhat alien idea conscientiously
much before it became a reality on 15 </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">August 1947 and 26 January 1950.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Yes.
The leaders of the Indian independence movement were mostly from the Western-educated
middle class. They had been weaned, so to speak, on Socrates and Plato, Marx
and Engels, Gibbon, Darwin, and Spencer, Smith and Keynes, Ruskin and Thoreau and
Shaw among others. Many of these thinkers and writers hailed from Great Britain
of which at the time India was a colony. Imbibing their thoughts, beliefs and
opinions was ironically like being “colonial mimics” </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://bit.ly/16Yhi4U"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">http://bit.ly/16Yhi4U</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> of sorts. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">But surely it is obvious that there are as many Ideas
of India as there are special interest groups and sub-groups, e.g., big
business, labour, Dalits, OBCs, tribals and so forth. Each group’s Idea of
India is needless to say calibrated to align with its special concerns. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Big business, for instance, would want maximum ROI,
least interference from the government, unlimited access to natural resources
and so forth. <i>Ergo</i>, the big
business’s Idea of India would be a country with a politico-economic system –
whether democratic or not − that treats business, particularly big business,
with kid gloves and so forth.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It’s time we backtracked a bit, though. The founding
fathers’ Idea of India was conceived against the backdrop of Nehru’s D<i>iscovery of India</i>, the seminal ideological
text on which the Nehruvian template of a liberal, secular, egalitarian democracy
with a “composite” and inclusive culture and a socialistic economy was based. Nehru
envisioned an Indian nation with the state entrusted with the task of ensuring
that no single special interest group, e.g., the Hindu majority or big
business, enjoyed significant privileges to the detriment of others. One of the
corollaries of this vision was the Indian state taking over the lead role in
the economic sphere. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Unfortunately, this meant the perpetuation of the <i>Ma Baap Sarkar </i>metaphor in the minds of
the illiterate majority − enhanced further by the continuance of feudalistic
behaviour of the bureaucracy, a legacy of the British Raj in any case. Furthermore,
the adoption of another legacy of the British Raj – both <i>Discovery of India </i>and <i>Constitution
of India </i>were written in English and the business of the Indian state continues
to be transacted in English − and the accidental privilege thereby conferred on
the miniscule English-speaking minority of the Indian population who ran the
emerging state enterprises merely confounded the already somewhat cloudy
scenario. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The Idea of India saga seems to have modeled itself on
Lemony Snicket’s <i>A Series of Unfortunate
Events</i>. The first major crack in the Nehruvian template came with his
daughter’s successive triumphs (Bangladesh, i.e., the splintering of Pakistan, bank nationalization, abolition of privy purses,
stoppage of food imports, a 20-year friendship pact with the USSR) culminating
in the 1974 Pokharan nuclear blast that caught the world’s attention. All this
prompted DK Barooah’s sycophantic “Indira is India, India is Indira” call. JP
Narayan’s challenge to Indira Gandhi’s autocratic rule triggered off the June
1975 declaration of emergency. <i> </i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The other four significant events in post-Independence
India that progressively sapped the
Nehruvian Idea of India of its relevance were the chronological order of
occurrence the following: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">[1] The anti-Sikh violence (1984)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">[2] The Shah Bano case (1985) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">[3] The Babri Masjid demolition (1992) and its
aftermath (1992-93) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">[4] The burning of a train at Godhra and the Gujarat riots
(2002).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Apart from these, there is the on-going virtual
occupation of Jammu and Kashmir and the North East by the Indian Army under the
pretence of keeping peace – a policy without an iota of success in stemming the
insurgency and the defiance of the Indian State. Equally worrying is the seemingly
unstoppable resurgence of the Naxals in the so-called red corridor comprising those
parts of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgrah, Jharkand, Madhya Prasesh,
Maharashtra, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal inhabited mainly by the marginalized
Adivasi tribals trying to eke a living out of forest produce and primitive
farming under constant threat from forestry officials and the mining
mafia. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Now that NaMo has all but demolished the flag bearers
of the Nehruvian Idea of India, history has finally been consigned to the
dustbin, maybe even to oblivion, where according to the “neo middle class” (a
NaMo hypothesis according to Sunil Khilnani </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://bit.ly/1gejUlY"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">http://bit.ly/1gejUlY</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">) it rightfully belongs. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Will it remain dead and buried for all times to come?
Your guess is as good as mine.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
Deepak Mankarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16135017690358976557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27462576.post-32331016339431790302014-05-09T16:47:00.000-07:002014-05-09T16:47:10.743-07:00Why NaMo is top-of-the-pops.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">Our Founding Fathers made two monumental mistakes when
power was transferred from the British Emperor to the Indian Government of
India in August 1947.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">Monumental mistake #1: They opted for universal
franchise without universal literacy. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">Monumental mistake #2: they did not dismantle the then
prevailing framework and mindset of Feudalism before ushering in Democracy. Equally
important, they did not bother to upgrade the bureaucracy set up by the British
to serve the aims of the Imperialistic reign of subjugating and controlling the
citizenry, of “keeping them in their proper place” at any cost as well as of extracting
an annual tribute (“drain”) of £30 million (roughly Rs.450 million in
contemporary exchange terms) in the reckoning of Dadabhai Naoroji (1825 -1917).
<a href="http://bit.ly/1jgDmya">http://bit.ly/1jgDmya</a> (By the by, in <i>Wealth of Nations</i>, Adam Smith dubbed the
British Rulers “plunderers of India”. <a href="http://bit.ly/1jCDpns">http://bit.ly/1jCDpns</a>)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">In 1952, around 85% of the eligible voters in India’s
first General Election – most of whom still
lived in abysmal poverty in the countryside − were <i>angutha chchaap</i>: they could neither read nor write. <i>Ma-baap Sarkar</i>, a legacy from the
British Rulers, was the only political metaphor they understood and could
relate to. The Indian National Congress won hands down. The 15% literate middle
class had almost no say in the matter. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">How different is the scenario at the time of the 2014
General Elections to constitute the 16<sup>th</sup> Lok Sabha? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;">Increasing urbanization particularly after globalization
has swelled the ranks of the urban middle class. They want better living
conditions, more jobs, better governance, less − if not zilch − corruption, decisive
leadership, less inequality. The omnipresence of television, the Internet <a href="http://bit.ly/1ssnDhP">http://bit.ly/1ssnDhP</a></span><span lang="EN-US"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;">and mobile phones has
further fuelled these burgeoning aspirations. The BJP seems to be the party of
choice of Middle India.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">Like it or not, admit it or not, NaMo = BJP as of this
moment. The personality cult for which it is fashionable to criticize the
Congress is very much alive and kicking away merrily in the BJP. NaMo demolished
every likely rival within the Party using tactics almost identical to the
Indira Gandhi gambit against The Syndicate in the winter of 1969. <a href="http://bit.ly/Rmeydm">http://bit.ly/Rmeydm</a>
Employing IT imaginatively and extensively, he has been successful in reaching
to, and enrolling for his cause, the urban (mostly middle class) youth.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; line-height: 115%;">The World Bank defines
poverty as survival on<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="-webkit-transition: all 0.2s ease-out; background-color: white; border: 1pt none windowtext; color: black; outline: 0px; padding: 0cm; transition: all 0.2s ease-out;"><a href="http://filipspagnoli.wordpress.com/stats-on-human-rights/statistics-on-poverty/statistics-on-poverty-and-absolute-income-levels/" style="-webkit-transition: all 0.2s ease-out; border-bottom-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2); outline: 0px; transition: all 0.2s ease-out;">less
than $</a></span></span><a href="http://filipspagnoli.wordpress.com/stats-on-human-rights/statistics-on-poverty/statistics-on-poverty-and-absolute-income-levels/" style="-webkit-transition: all 0.2s ease-out; border-bottom-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2); line-height: 21.466665267944336px; outline: 0px; transition: all 0.2s ease-out;"><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; color: black; padding: 0cm;">1.25 per day</span></a><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21.466665267944336px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 115%;">(2005 purchasing power parity) and says that, between
1981 and 2005, poverty in India dipped from 60% of the population to 42%. The
number in 2010 was 33% (about 400 million people).<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><a href="http://bit.ly/1s2synE" style="line-height: 115%;">http://bit.ly/1s2synE</a><span style="line-height: 115%;"> There is much dispute
about the veracity of the Government of India and World Bank statistics. After
making allowance for population growth in the interim, there appears to have
been very little progress on the poverty alleviation front since 1947 –
certainly nothing to boast about with claims like “India Shining”. The UPA-II
efforts to alleviate poverty (Public Distribution System, Integrated Rural
Development Program, Jawahar Rozgar Yojana and Training Rural Youth for
Self Employment) have met with very limited success.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">As for literacy, UNICEF tells us that between 2008 and
2012, 62.8% of Indians aged 15 years and over were able to read and write. The
literacy rates in the age group 15 – 24 years for the same time span were 88.4%
(male) and 74.4% (female). The net
primary school enrolment rate for 2008 – 2011 was 98.6%. It looks like the 2014
General Elections have a literate electorate. Does it mean that it will be a conscientious
electorate?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">Ironically though, if Middle India’s aspirations are
contemporary, many from their ranks still respond to Feudalistic overtures:
religion, caste, social status, respect for authority and the pecking order among
others. NaMo seems to have understood this characteristic of the electorate
well. To assure them that he means business, he talks down to them like a
decisive leader. Every election speech is a diatribe, a raging tirade. </span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;">He
blunders on declaring that the elections are for the 14<sup>th</sup> Lok Sabha in a rally in </span><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;">Gumla (Jharkhand</span>);
linking Chandragupta Maurya with the Gupta dynasty, giving Biharis credit for
halting the victorious onslaught of Alexander and relocating Taxila in Bihar –
all these in a Patna rally; bumping off Shyama Prasad Mookherji, Jan Sangh’s
founder, in 1930 in London in a Kheda (Gujarat) meeting (in fact, he died in a Jammu
& Kashmir prison in 1953); and changing Gandhi’s first name to “Mohanlal”
in a Punjab rally. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">The NaMo juggernaut thunders on
regardless. His fans don’t seem to care about his historical inaccuracies. They
have been brought up listening to lies and false promises mouthed by
politicians. They want to believe in someone. That someone happens to be NaMo.
His Gujarat governance record is not bad. His role in the 2002 riots seems to
have been forgiven. His style of dealing with problems seems decisive. The saviour
has been found at last. NaMo is the one. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">All hail NaMo. Bow to NaMo. Kowtow to NaMo.
There is no alternative left. </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</div>
Deepak Mankarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16135017690358976557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27462576.post-69462282064577988652014-05-05T18:14:00.001-07:002014-05-05T18:14:33.619-07:00Why Teddy Bears get my goat.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Ironical
though it may sound, post-colonial urban Indians are prone to closet colonial
mimicry, whether they know and/or admit it or not. In their best colonial mimicry
mode, many Indian script writers foist from time to time Teddy Bears on to
their characters as a symbol of childhood innocence and on to their storylines
as a pointer to the impending arrival of a baby in the family, an adoption and
so forth. Often, they unwittingly insert Teddy into imagined homes least likely
to be aware of its iconic role in English-speaking Western cultures as a “warm,
friendly, tolerant, accepting and compassionate” friend. <a href="http://bit.ly/1kNwPuf">http://bit.ly/1kNwPuf</a> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Mind you, I have nothing against poor cuddly Teddies <i>per se</i> − in their proper place and in
the right context. I must confess, though, that I as a child never had one. We
Mankars, colonial mimics of the second – if not the first – water, residing at
233 Khetwadi Main Road </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://bit.ly/1fcggIG"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">http://bit.ly/1fcggIG</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> seasonally consumed rum’n’raisin
Christmas cakes from the original Monginis at Flora Fountain and plum pudding
from Kayani’s; bought <i>faux</i> Christmas
stockings from the toy shops at Crawford Market; shopped occasionally − and
that too, very, very sparingly − at Whiteaway Laidlaw and Evan Fraser on Hornby
Road and Army & Navy on Esplanade Road </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://bit.ly/R9RuxY"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">http://bit.ly/R9RuxY</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> in Fort; read Dickens,
Richmal Crompton and the Grimm Brothers; devoutly chanted Mother Goose nursery
rhymes; listened from time to time to <i>Doing
the Lambeth Walk</i> on our wind-up turntable; and stood up in the cinema hall every
time they played<i> God Save the King</i>. In short, we did without fail all the things all self-respecting
pre-1947 colonial mimics were expected to do. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The epiphany that dropped in for a visit after I
googled “Teddy Bear” concerned the place of its nativity. The awesome cuddly
did not – alas! – hail from the homeland of our erstwhile Imperial masters.
Instead, it was a native of the old country from across the Big Pond of their
erstwhile colonial cousins. Apocrypha has it that its moniker mimicked the
sporting US Prez “Teddy” Roosevelt’s “handle” to honour his refusal to shoot a
live bear tied to a willow tree during a 1902 hunting trip arranged by the
Mississippi governor. </span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://bbc.in/1kxDlmW">http://bbc.in/1kxDlmW</a></span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Teddy’s birth is equally noteworthy. Like the recent idiot-box
fad of simulcast, It was simul-birthed. Morris Michtom, a Russian immigrant
selling candy in his Brooklyn store, is one of the two credited with making the
first Teddy. The other joint holder of the Teddy Maker title was Richard Steiff
who exhibited his version of the stuffed marvel at the Leipzig Toy Fair in
1903. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Enough already. By now, you can probably make a shrewd
guess why I prefer Linus van Pelt’s security blanket insouciantly flung over
his left shoulder to Nancy’s and Garfield’s Teddies. Has this something to do
with the fact that Linus’s constant companion is multi-functional? <a href="http://bit.ly/1kMXKGk">http://bit.ly/1kMXKGk</a> Maybe. Richard H
Passman, a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee psychologist, found that “the
blanket promoted play, exploration and non-distress in their mothers' absence”.
The security blanket acts as a “pretend” playmate-comforter, in other words. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Far
be it for me to sell Teddy short, though, just because I do not personally gel
with it. In English-speaking Western cultures, psychologists see it variously as
“a normal part of a child’s development”, a “transitional experience between
the infant’s ability to distinguish the inner subjective world from outside
reality”, a substitute for the absent mother (temp surrogate mom?) – in short, a
normal, desirable and beneficial component of growing up. Teddy has also done
yeoman service in class rooms by intrinsically motivating children to learn (i.e.,
by creating an ambience – mood, feel or atmosphere – where the pleasure of
learning is its own reward). Teddy has done himself proud by being the perfect helpmate
to cops, firemen and paramedics for reaching out to scared, lost and
traumatized children in rescue scenarios as well. In a Boston Children’s Museum project, kids
were encouraged to take their Teddy Bears for a free medical check-up by real
doctors with a view to lessen their fear of medical practitioners and
hospitals.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Okay,
Teddy. It’s time I gave up. You’re no bugbear. On the contrary, you may be
quite the opposite. I owe you an apology. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
Deepak Mankarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16135017690358976557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27462576.post-52789462771475178702014-04-25T02:07:00.000-07:002014-04-25T02:07:24.244-07:00An Honest-to-goodness Tale from the Loco Shed. No kidding’!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Once again, thanks to a fortunate stroke of
serendipity, I have chanced upon a children’s story I wrote in 1974 and
abandoned to its fate. <i>Pop Goes the Slop</i>
is already home to a distant cousin of the latest find. </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://bit.ly/1m7bEWO"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">http://bit.ly/1m7bEWO</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> So without further ado, here comes the story
of Chintamani and his loco friends spruced up and updated for 2014.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Chintu comes up with a loco idea.</span></i></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">“Tweet you tomorrow,” whistled Speedy Sparky as he
whizzed past the loco shed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">“Whoosh,” sighed Huff’n’Puff wistfully. “Just look at
him go!”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">“Awwww! Speedy’s just a big show-off, he is,” consoled
Chintu promptly. He did not like to see his old friend sad and fretful.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">“Spare us the rubbish, young Chints. Show-off? Hah!
Speedily can easily touch 120 without huffin’ an’ puffin’. That’s at least ten
times faster than your slowpoke shunt-artist friends.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">This cruel barb came from Danny Diesel who had just
entered the loco shed for his last-minute check-up. Danny knew very well that
this kind of talk hurt the old timers and their loyal friend Chintu. But he
hardly ever let that stop him.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">“Keep quiet, Danny” was Chintu’s angry retort. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Before he could continue, Cheerful Chuggy gave a
warning toot.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">“Cool it, Chintoo. Danny is – toot! – right,” he said
a trifle mournfully. “It’s Danny and Speedy and – toot! – youngsters like them
who do all the real – toot! – fast work in the shunting yard these days.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Chintu wanted to point out that, all said and done,
Danny guzzled diesel oil and Speedy thrived on electricity while his pals worked
strictly on their own steam. But he knew it wouldn’t do any good to dispel the
dark and gloomy mood Huffy was in right now.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">“Times have sure changed, haven’t they?” sputtered
Huffy despondently. “Why I still remember the days…”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">“Can it, Gramps,” cut in Danny with a sneer. “Spare us
another one of your – yawwwn! – rambling loco tales.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Chintu sat quietly until Danny left the loco shed. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">“Don’t mind him, Huffy,” he said once he was sure
Danny was out of earshot. “He just likes to tease, you know.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">That didn’t lift Huffy’s dark mood. But Cheerful
Chuggy was as usual true to his name.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">“Quit being so huffy, Huffy dear,” he appealed to his
friend playfully. “Do tell young – toot! – Chintoo how you saved your – toot! –
train when the rains had – toot! toot! – washed away the bridge near – toot! –
Hoshiarpur, wasn’t it?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Chuggy knew that would do the trick. It did. Like
always.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">An hour later, after listening to Huffy’s tale (he had
heard it at least a dozen times before), Chintu left the loco shed in deep
thought.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">His mind was made up. He had to get Huffy and Chuggy
out of the loco shed and the shunt yard pretty fast. The change would do them a
world of good. Also, it would teach Speedy and Danny a long overdue lesson.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">There was an even more pressing reason for haste.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Chintu’s dad was the superintendent of the shunt year
where Huffy and Chuggy worked. He knew all that was going on in the yard and
the loco shed. Lately, there had been a lot of loose talk about retiring the
old timers to the junk heap. The sooner, the better was the verdict of the
Speedy and Danny gang. All that was now needed, it seemed, was the arrival of
the mini diesel-powered shunt locomotives (the requisition had already been
issued for them, said his dad) along with the final clearance from the Indian
Railways headquarters.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">So, it was only a matter of time, maybe a few weeks
and no more.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Chintu shook his head resolutely to chase away the
wicked thought. He couldn’t bring himself to imagine the yard and the shed
without Huffy and Chuggy. He must save them. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">But how?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">“Chintoooo!”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It sounded like a musical horn out of tune. Only one
person besides Chuggy called him Chintoo instead of Chintu. And, before he
could run out of harm’s way, the “musical horn” had firmly taken hold of his
sleeve.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Pesky Meena, his next-door neighbor, was a very
determined ten-year old who simply refused to be discouraged by Chintu’s most off-putting
dodges.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Sometimes, with luck on his side, he could pretend not
to notice her and duck out of her way just in time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Certainly not today, though. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">”Chintoooo bhaiya,” Meena squealed as was her wont.
“Guess where we are going?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Chintu knew he wasn’t expected to answer. All she
wanted was compliance. She had already started dragging him to wherever she had
decided they were going.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Meena took Chintu’s silence for consent and skipped
along the road merrily chattering nineteen to the dozen about the treasure
house of delights she was taking him to. She didn’t say a word about where it
was, though.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It took them a good part of a quarter hour to get
there. It turned out to be the squat grey bungalow, just beyond the railway
staff quarters. It was now housing the local Railway Museum. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">“You know, Chintoooo bhaiya, they have on a special
show of old railroad pictures. Old locos and trains and stuff. Maybe we will
get to see Huffy and Chuggy’s grandpas,” Meena said sneaking a sly glance at
Chintu’s face. She knew how fond Chintoo was of the old timers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">They spent the next hour wandering around the main
hall and the back rooms. Any other day, Chintu would have devoted many more
merry hours in this treasure trove studying every detail of each locomotive and
passenger coaches and freight cars in the photographs. Today, preoccupied as he
was with the fate of his loco friends, his attention was at best perfunctory. Every
glance at the old locomotives in the pictures was a reminder that he may lose
Huffy and Chuggy’s company soon. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">What made it even worse was that neither Huffy nor
Chuggy had a clue about what was in store for them. If only he could think of a
way out in time…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It happened when he was least expecting it. Just when
they were about to step out of the Museum, a handwritten notice taped to the
door caught his eye. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 188.0pt; text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 188.0pt; text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">NOTICE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 188.0pt; text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 188.0pt; text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">VISITORS MAY PLACE THEIR <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 188.0pt; text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">SUGGESTIONS ABOUT THIS
SHOW<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 188.0pt; text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">IN THE BOX BELOW.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 188.0pt; text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">OUTSTANDING IDEAS MAY<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 188.0pt; text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">WIN A PRIZE.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 188.0pt; text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 188.0pt; text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">−→ BY ORDER OF THE CURATOR<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">“Eureka!” exclaimed Chintu who had just read the story
of Archimedes. The “loco” idea that had just popped in his head might be just
the thing to save his loco pals. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In the twinkling of an eye, he was on his way. Even Meena’s
high-pitched “Chintoooo!” did not make him break his stride.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">He did not even pause to pet Moti who wagged his tail
furiously, jumped and raised a cacophony of woofs and yelps at his master’s
stormy arrival. He just couldn’t wait to put down his loco idea on paper and
into the suggestion box.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">An hour later, a thoroughly confused and utterly
dumbfounded Moti once again watched his usually well-mannered master dash away
on an errand with nary a civil pat. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The next week passed uneventfully and without a single
word from Meena who seemed to have finally taken his unmannerly behaviour at
the Museum gate to heart and gave him a wide berth. Even Moti was subdued. And
so were Huffy and Chuggy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It was only on Friday afternoon, after school, that
Chintu ran smack into the whirlpool of excitement that had gripped the loco
shed and the shunt yard.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">As he entered the shed, Danny who had been talking to
Speedy excitedly called out to him.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">“So, young Chints, at last they’ve had some sense
knocked into their fat heads,” he cried venomously. “They’ll soon be banishing
your dear old loco buddies to the junk heap where they belong. The crummy bunch
of losers that they are! My cousins, real fast mini diesel dudes both, will be
taking over the shunting chores. You’ll soon witness some fast and furious
action around this place, boy!”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">His sneer was as palpable as a razor-sharp exclamation
mark. It hurt.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Chintu couldn’t believe his ears. So, finally, it had
come to this, eh? All his careful planning and desperate hoping had come to naught.
Poor dear Huffy and Chuggy! What was going to become of them? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Without uttering a word, he turned on his heels and
ran as fast as he could out of the shed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Much, much later, a little after the sun had gone home
after a hard day’s work of lighting up the world, Chintu found himself walking
home with a heavy heart and a step to match.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">“Where have you been all afternoon, Chintu beta?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Those were his dad’s first words that greeted him as
he entered the sitting room in a daze.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">His mom who was talking to a stranger sitting across
her and sipping a cup of coffee turned to him and said: “Look who’s waiting for
you since five o’clock.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The tall, somewhat lanky stranger got up from his chair
and came forward to shake Chintu’s hand. Nobody had ever done that to him so
far: treated him as a grown-up, that is to say. He felt a bit awkward, not
knowing how to react.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">“Well, well, well. So this is Chintamani, the bright ideas
guy,” beamed the stranger, his kindly eyes peering at Chintu over the top of a
pair of half moon glasses perched precariously on the bridge of his nose. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Chintu was at a loss for words. What bright idea?
Which guy? Chintu’s bewilderment must have shown on his face because his father
who was watching him intently said by way of explanation: “Didn’t you give a
suggestion at the Museum the other day about how to put to better use the old
denizens of our loco shed?” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">At long last, a light bulb lit up in Chintu’s dazed
minds.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">“You mean they liked my idea of a Museum Train going
round the country, lugged by Huffs and Chuggs? You mean they won’t be sent to
the junk yard?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">“Yes to both your questions,” said the stranger who
now had his arm draped over Chintu’s shoulder. “Let me introduce myself,
Chintamani. I am the Chief Curator of the Indian Railways Museum here on a very
pleasant and personal mission. I had to meet the guy who thought of sending the
Railway Museum to the travellers in the remotest part of our country of vast
distances rather than waiting for them to visit New Delhi or Mysore or what
have you to learn about its century and a half long history. I was especially
taken up by your brainwave of hauling Indian Railways’ history around India by
a couple of old timers in the loco shed.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">“He means Huffy and Chuggy, beta,” added Chintu’s mom
prompted perhaps by his as yet bewildered expression.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">“It was evident to me,” continued the Curator, “that
only a true loco buddy could have dreamed up this loco scheme. I had to come to
shake his hand.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">“And you know the best part, Chintu?” asked his dad in
a tone of suppressed excitement.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">“No, please,” interrupted the Curator hastily. “Let me
have the pleasure of telling him. By the way, did you know that Chintamani
means a magical precious stone that can fulfill wishes?” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">“It’s also one of Lord Ganesha’s many names,”
contributed Chintu’s mom.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">“Quite so,” agreed the Curator. “Coming back to the
good news, the Indian Railways Museum has decided to roll out at the earliest
opportunity the Museum-on-Rails right away. Coming to even better news,
everyone linked to the decision-making process has unanimously decided to
reward the author of the scheme in a way that will recognize his love for all
things connected with the railways, locos not excluded. So as soon as the
summer holidays start – in fact, on the evening of the last day of school − the
Museum-on-Rails will chug out of the shunting yard on its way to its first
stop. And, guess who will be the passengers in the specially attached coach?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Chintu scratched his head and then shook it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">“Give up already? Never mind. I’ll tell you.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">“As you know, Chintamani, your dad is the
superintendent of the shunting yard and, of course, the loco shed. He is one of
the best in the business. What he doesn’t know about keeping the hard-working
locos – including and especially the old timers − in shape is not worth
knowing. He has to cope with unreliable supplies of spares and make do with
recycled stuff. We think we cannot find a better guarantor of the rail-worthiness
of the Museum-on-Rail than him. So, he will be in charge of the show. Your mom
and you will keep him company. But, hey! I have earmarked the two of you for
special duties throughout the journey. The two of you will be the official
chroniclers for Museum-on-Rails. You will write a blog every day, go on Twitter
to mark every notable event, post to Facebook and Pinterest, report to me every
day on email. By the way, this is not an honorary assignment. That is what I
was telling your mom when you came in.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Chintu was busy preparing for his annual examination while
Huffy and Chuggy were being overhauled and groomed for the real long haul to
come – in a securely cordoned-off corner of the loco shed. The driver’s cabins
got new upholstery. Their bodies were buffed to a sparkle. Every afternoon,
Chintu and his mom visited them when nobody was around, made notes about the progress
and took pictures to post on the blog, Facebook and Pinterest. Work also went
on apace inside the coaches to arrange the pictorial depiction of historical
landmarks – the exhibits, in other words. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Come D (for departure) Day, the Museum-on-Rails was
flagged off by the Curator with Huffy proudly puffing away in the lead and
Chuggy happily bringing up the rear with an occasional Toot! Or, maybe two, at
times. Chintu rode with his mom and dad and Moti in the last bogie, the one to
which Chuggy was hitched. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">And when he saw Danny and Speedy enviously watching
the Museum-on-Rail chugging out of the shunt yard, he had to make a special
effort to stop himself from sticking out his tongue.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">That, boys and girls, was quite an effort.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">His consolation was Moti woofing away to glory at the
envious pair. For once, his usually well-behaved master didn’t tell Moti to
mind his manners.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">And that, boys and girls, did not take much of an
effort.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">© Deepak Mankar 1974, 2014.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Afterthoughts.</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The story you just read is obviously not for <i>The Cloud and the Kite</i> readers’ age
group but for the pre- and early-teen crowd.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The latter half of <i>The
Cloud and the Kite</i> is based loosely somewhat along the lines of the
simple-minded logic of the following nursery rhyme: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">For want of
a nail the shoe was lost.<br />
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.<br />
For want of a horse the rider was lost.<br />
For want of a rider the battle was lost.<br />
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.<br />
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">(The
earlier part works on the equally simple-minded logic of “if not this then that”.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The story of<i> <b>Chintu
comes up with a loco idea</b></i> has a logic all its own. When I wrote it, I eschewed
what I think of as the classic <i>Reader’s
Digest</i> approach to writing: pre-digested and condensed, no “big” words
(“plain, common, short words” of “Anglo-Saxon origin” with greater emotional
punch), minimum use of adjectives and adverbs, short sentences, enhanced
readability, treatment of a subject in outline (no details please, we’re
pressed for time, remember?). I’m referring to <i>Reader’s Digest</i> of the DeWitt and Lila Wallace (1889 - 1981) vintage,
of course,<i> </i>when every article reportedly
got 20 to 30 hours of editorial attention. </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://bit.ly/1tBjDND"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">http://bit.ly/1tBjDND</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> The present-day
incarnation of <i>Reader’s Digest</i> is a
very pale shadow of its erstwhile self.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I have a running debate with Ujwal about emulating the
writing style of <i>Reader’s Digest</i> of the
DeWitt Wallace era when I am writing fiction. My understanding is the <i>Reader’s Digest </i>style is okay<i> </i>for <i>Reader’s
Digest.</i> They want to make reading effortless and painless. It is also okay for
writing print ads and direct mail. But, mind you, it is one-way writing: <i>Reader’s Digest </i>−→ reader. The onus of
reaching the reader is always on <i>Reader’s
Digest.</i> There is nothing left for the reader to do.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I want my reader to be someone who will make an effort
to read what I write. He must enjoy reading and want to graduate to even better
class of books. Every time he reaches for what I have written (other than
advertising, of course), there must be a tacit understanding between us that
the onus is shared between me and him. If he doesn’t know a word or two that
happens to be in the text, I want him to look it up. In short, what I am
looking for is an alert, interactive reader who reads on his own steam rather
than likes to be spoon-fed <i>Reader’s
Digest</i> style. Readers from the pre- and early-teen crowd are probably the
ideal target for what I have in mind, I guess. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">And, much as I admire Groucho Marx, I cannot
emulate his example in this particular case, shrug my shoulders and walk away after
declaiming: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">“Those are my principles, and if you
don't like them<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">... well, I have others.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
Deepak Mankarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16135017690358976557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27462576.post-91756998825834104562014-04-02T04:20:00.000-07:002014-04-02T04:20:08.950-07:00Might as well enjoy India’s very last general elections.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt;">The writing is already on the wall. The
portents are there for those who want to see them. It is a wonder how our crack
political analysts continue to ignore their message, why they refuse to take
the final leap of imagination. (That’s not strictly accurate: on Saturday, 29
March 2014, Kanti Bajpai in his Times of India article on Page 16, “Journey
Towards Soft Fascism” did hint at the shape of things to come. There may be
more such comments I have not read.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt;">NaMo, pronounced the proper way (“Na” as in
“Narendra”, “Mo” as in “Modi”) is a command in Sanskrit to bow down, to worship.
Make no mistake. You are being told in no uncertain terms to change your
behaviour, to perform an act of supplication. Ignore the message at your own
peril, boys and girls.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Modi brooks no opposition to his relentless
march to 7 Racecourse Road in Lutyens’ Delhi. He has already put all his
potential rivals in BJP (Big Guns one and all, mind you) in their place – in
the shade – out of reckoning – so demoralized that it will take them quite a
while to recover, let alone even think of retaliating. In this respect, he
reminds me of Indira Gandhi versus The Syndicate, <i>c.</i> 1969, a modern reenactment of the legendary David versus Goliath
encounter.<i> </i>And, all this notwithstanding
all his talk about being a strict follower of party discipline and so forth. <a href="http://bit.ly/1lxr2eG">http://bit.ly/1lxr2eG</a> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt;">In a smart move to lend legitimacy and glamour to NaMo,
they have even commissioned his “authorized” political biography launched close
to the date of the general elections. The 310-page tome is written by a
little-known British (our former masters, remember? Clever, clever!) author and
filmmaker, Andy Marino. Marino’s provenance seems at best somewhat sketchy (PhD
in Eng. Lit.). (Are there such creatures in the world as literary mercenaries?)
His “literary” output consists of obscure non-fiction (<i>A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fry</i> and <i>Hershel: The Boy Who Started World War Two</i>).
If one were to take him at his word, though, he has had “a long relationship
with India” and has been “interested in its politics and history as far back as
I can recall.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Be
that as it may, in his Hindustan Times interview <a href="http://bit.ly/Pc9S8A">http://bit.ly/Pc9S8A</a>
Marino certified Modi’s straightforwardness adding that he was “complex” and “a
better administrator or anybody so completely possessed with enthusiasm for
what he does. His brain runs non-stop thinking about ways to improve
everything, and there’s an incredible energy.” As far as Modi’s honesty is concerned, Marino
says that he checked and cross-checked his answers and found them above
reproach. (For the convenience of the dyslexic as well as book-hating readers,
Rannade Prakashan and Blue Snail Animation have published a 45-page NaMo comic
book, <i>Bal Narendra</i>, apparently in the
Bal Hanuman vein. So, no efforts have been spared in nurturing the NaMo mythology.)
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The
BJP campaign slogan is “<i>Agli baar Modi
Sarkar</i>” (Coming next: Modi Government). This has the same shade of the
recent abject capitulation by Penguin and Aleph about Wendy Doniger’s books on
Hinduism. Of course, the reason for not promising a BJP Sarkar may be twofold:
(1) The earlier BJP rule was not entirely free from taints of corruption and
scams. (2) If Modi comes to power, it will be most likely as the leader of a coalition.
Like Manmohan Singh, he too will have to face the vagaries of running a
coalition government. Eventually, given his popular support and, more
important, his forceful and aggressive personality, he may be able to drive a
tougher bargain with his partners. As time passes, NaMo will begin to better
appreciate the systemic impediments in his path. Once again his inherent nature
will not allow him to accept defeat meekly. His only option then will be to
take matters in his own two capable hands.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">As
liberal conventional wisdom would have it, NaMo’s final ascension to absolute
no-holds power, if it ever comes to pass, may seem a disaster. The other way to
see it is as a happening belonging to the class of what Robert and Elizabeth
Bjork of UCLA Bjork Learning & Forgetting Lab have called “desirable
difficulties”. It will allow the decisive Shri NaMo to dismantle the wasteful
democratic superstructure of elections at both central and state levels thereby
saving the country enormous amounts of resources and removing in a single
stroke one of the biggest causes of corruption. Decision making and implementation can be
speeded up. Work ethics and discipline will improve by leaps and bounds as in
the days of Indira Gandhi’s Emergency. Business and “development” will get the
priority that Middle India is hankering after. India will be able to compete
with China on a level playing field. All this would not happen overnight but
during the course of the next five years. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Remember,
though, that all medicines would be placebos except for the patient’s belief in
their healing power.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
Deepak Mankarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16135017690358976557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27462576.post-2896917202891025112014-01-21T02:18:00.001-08:002014-01-21T02:18:58.557-08:00Mr MK Gandhi, Esquire: Hyde side showing. Oops-a-daisy!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Believe
it or not, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi started his adult life − with his own willing
consent − as a “Man Friday” of the British Empire. You remember the British colonizer-hero’s “savage”
companion from Daniel DeFoe’s <i>Robinson Crusoe</i> whom he taught English,
converted to Christianity and “civilized”, don’t you?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Jog
your memory a tad bit more and you’ll recall two distinguishing features of Crusoe’s
colonial rule explicitly laid down by him: (1) “the whole country was my
property … [with] an undoubted right of dominion” and (2) “my people were
perfectly subjected – I was absolutely lord and lawgiver…” (Daniel DeFoe, <i>Robinson Crusoe, </i>Barnes & Noble
Classics, p.236). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">His Majesty’s Most Obedient Servant. </span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In the very next paragraph,
Crusoe dubbed Friday “my interpreter” between himself and his subjects
(Friday’s father and the Spaniard both of whom he had rescued from the
cannibals). Curiously, Macaulay too used the very same word in his famous
Minutes on Indian Education (02 February 1833) in which he proposed “to form a
class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a
class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in
opinions, in morals, and in intellect.” <a href="http://bit.ly/1j6DNa6">http://bit.ly/1j6DNa6</a>
Unwittingly, he was suggesting the unleashing of a powerful tool to create in
perpetuity a legion of “colonial mimics” or VS Naipaul’s “mimic men” intended to
serve the British Empire. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Homi
K Bhabha, the renowned cultural and postcolonial theorist of Indian origin
currently heading the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard University, called
the outcome of this process “hybridization”. Because the colonial mimic could
only be an imperfect clone: “almost there but not quite” as he quaintly phrased
it. In the context of what happened later to Gandhi, this observation of Bhabha
is undoubtedly noteworthy. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The burden a colonial mimic carries. </span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Gandhi was – surprise,
surprise! − a product of Maculay’s far-sighted and astute education policy. “...
at the start, Gandhi was an excellent colonial mimic. He took his degree from
the Inns of Court in London, and when he arrived in South Africa in 1893 to
practice law, he looked every inch an Englishman,” writes Richard Schechner in <i>Performance Studies: An Introduction</i>
(Routledge, 2012). <a href="http://bit.ly/1amBCO0">http://bit.ly/1amBCO0</a> Remember
what Frantz Fanon, the French psychiatrist and Marxist of Creole origin, wrote
in <i>Black skin, White Masks</i>? “To speak
a language is to take on a world, a culture.” (p.38, Grove Press, 1967)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I’m okay. You’re a Kaffir. </span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">During his political stint
in South Africa, while Gandhi fought to get a better treatment for his
fellow-Indians, he also organized “medical orderlies and other noncombatant
contributors for a punitive war against the Zulus” and hardly paid heed to “the
treatment of black Africans in South Africa, alluding to them in print as
‘kaffirs’”. <a href="http://bit.ly/1birTcH">http://bit.ly/1birTcH</a> In its
original Arabic sense, “kaffir” means “infidel”. At the time of Gandhi’s South
African sojourn, it was the standard handle used by the Whites to address the
Black South Africans. By adopting the established usage of the ruling class,
Gandhi displayed what V S Naipaul considers an exclusively Hindu trait: a total
unconcern for others who are not like oneself, their viewpoint, their situation.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Still
ensconced in his colonial mimic mode, Gandhi supported the British Empire in
World War I enthusiastically − perhaps a bit more so than he had during the
Boer and Zulu Wars. (Gandhi had won the British Empire’s War Medal for
meritorious service as the second-in-command of the Indian Volunteer Corps in
the Zulu War.) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Right reason. Wrong cause. </span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The end of the Great War
came on 11 November 1918. Germany, Austria and Turkey were vanquished. The
British and their allies imprisoned the Ottoman Sultan, Turkey’s ruler, successor
to the Prophet and the leader of the Muslim world known as “Caliph”/”Khalif”. Indian
Muslims were incensed by his incarceration. Their brethren in Arabia and Turkey
were quite pleased by the turn of events. As was his wont, Gandhi – and the
Congress Party − backed the Khilafat agitation in order to win over the Indian
Muslims, paying no heed whatsoever to the Arabian and Turkish Muslims’
viewpoint. The Holy Mule had blundered again!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">As
we saw earlier, till the end of the Great War, Gandhi had been a loyal fan and
follower of the British Empire. However, he found the Crown Emperor offering him
and His Majesty’s Indian subjects nothing in return, not even “the rights of
Englishmen” − Gandhi was even at that time a colonial mimic − let alone <i>swaraj </i>or home rule within the Commonwealth.
The colonial mask then gradually started crumbling. Barely two years down the
line, his inner voice prompted him to declaim: “The
British empire today represents Satanism, and they who love God can afford to
have no love for Satan.” By the time World War II arrived, Gandhi had
become an enemy of the Empire, demanding complete independence for his country.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Jekyll & Hyde. </span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In February 1944, Kasturba
contacted bronchial pneumonia in Aga Khan Palace where she had been imprisoned
along with her husband. When she failed to respond to Ayurvedic medicines,
British doctors suggested penicillin injections as the last resort. But Gandhi,
the perennial Nature Cure faddist, refused to allow them to administer the
antibiotic and she breathed her last on 19 February. Six weeks later, though,
when he got an attack of malaria, he did not refuse the quinine prescribed by
the doctor. Earlier, in 1924, he had also allowed an emergency appendectomy to
be performed on himself. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Girl friends galore. </span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Gandhi’s detractors also
point to the long list of his intimate associates of the opposite sex to question
his <i>brahmacharya</i> claims. Mille Polak,
a colleague’s spouse in South Africa, smitten by him as she was, opposed his
outlandish dietary notions and his insistence on chastity of his coworkers. Millie’s
sister-in-law, Maude, working as his personal secretary, also fell under
Gandhi’s spell. Esther Faering, a Danish missionary, was his next serious
involvement. The next in the queue was Sarla Choudhuri, his “spiritual wife” after
“an intellectual wedding” <a href="http://bit.ly/17jKVk0">bit.ly/17jKVk0</a>
who did not bow down to his authority despite her feelings for him. Among his <i>brahmacharya</i> bedmates at various
junctures in his life were Rajkumari Amrita Kaur, Sushila Nayar, Lilavati Asar,
Sharada Parnekar, Prabhavat Narayan
(Jayaprakash Narayan’s wife), Sucheta Kriplani, Abha Gandhi, Kanchan Shah and
last though not the least, Manu Gandhi who was his great grand-niece and who
considered him “her mother”. His female care givers had in their numbers Prema
Kantak, Mirabehn (Madeleine Slade), Sushila Nayar in her capacity as his
personal physician and masseur, Lilavati Asar <i>qua</i> his personal masseur, Sharada Parnekar, Rajkumari Amrita Kaur, Prabhavat
Narayan, Sucheta Kriplani and Abha Gandhi. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The last straw. </span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Apropos of his <i>brahmacharya</i> experiments with female
subjects (later grandiosely rechristened <i>mahayagna</i>
by him), his long-time associate, Dr Sushila Nayar, told Ved Mehta that "… long before Manu came into the picture, I used to sleep
with him just as I would with my mother. . . . In the early days there was no
question of calling this a<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>brahmacharya
</i>experiment. It was just part of a nature cure. Later on, when people
started asking questions about his physical contact with women, the idea of<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>brahmacharya</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>experiments was developed." Even
Gandhi himself had doubts about his own motives: “I feel my action was impelled
by vanity and jealousy. If my experiment was dangerous, I should not have
undertaken it. And if it was worth trying, I should have encouraged my
co-workers to undertake it on my conditions. My experiment was a violation of
the establishment norms of <i>brahmacharya.</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Such a right can be enjoyed only by a
saint like Shukadevji who can remain pure in thought, word and deed at all
times of day.” <a href="http://bit.ly/LDnmJf">http://bit.ly/LDnmJf</a> Gandhi
was surprisingly insensitive to Manu whom he used as a subject in his
“experiment”. Once during his epic peace march in Naukhali, he compelled her to
trudge a long way through riot-infested territory merely to retrieve a pumice
stone that she had forgotten at their previous campsite. Also, when Manu requested
the discontinuance of the nightly practice, he brazenly blamed the abrupt
stoppage on her inexperience thereby absolving himself of responsibility. Girja Kumar<span class="apple-converted-space"> (</span><i>Brahmacharya:
Gandhi and His Women Associates</i>, Vitasta,
p. 331) writes: "Just five days before Gandhiji was assassinated,
he charged her with failing to realize the potential of <i>mahayajna</i>.”<i> <span class="apple-converted-space">She</span></i><span class="apple-converted-space">
was the culprit – not <i>he</i>. He was the
Mahatma, all said and done, was he not? <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</div>
Deepak Mankarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16135017690358976557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27462576.post-68645980741068099422014-01-08T17:10:00.001-08:002014-01-08T17:10:12.676-08:00Pop Goes the Slop: How Mother Goose sneaked into my childhood.<a href="http://popgoestheslop.blogspot.com/2014/01/how-mother-goose-sneaked-into-my.html?spref=bl">Pop Goes the Slop: How Mother Goose sneaked into my childhood.</a>: Once upon a time, nearly three score years ago, there used to be a magical shop at the junction of Kalbadevi Road and Princess Street. The...Deepak Mankarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16135017690358976557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27462576.post-35848293933873880212014-01-08T17:02:00.000-08:002014-01-08T17:02:08.973-08:00How Mother Goose sneaked into my childhood.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Once upon a time, nearly three score years ago, there
used to be a magical shop at the junction of Kalbadevi Road and Princess Street.
The name board in all probability read either “Valabhdas Lakhmidas & Co.” or “The
Talking Machine & Indian Record Co.”. Maybe, both. This shop, a favourite
haunt of musicians and music lovers, used to sell all manner of musical
instruments, phonographs, vinyl records and related paraphernalia. Among the
plethora of things on sale was a wind-up toy gramophone with a dark almond-hued
leather body and a detachable golden-tinted tone arm made of aluminum. The turntable
of this contraption was wobbly. In turn, the sound emanating from the sound box
was a tad scratchy and cartoonish-sounding. This did not matter, though. The
stack of 7-inch vinyl discs accompanying the wee little phonograph was a bunch
of Mother Goose’s handiwork. A nursery rhyme bonanza was my sixth-birthday gift
received scant 14 days after His Majesty’s Government received the Quit India
ultimatum from Gandhi & Co. delivered at Gowalia Tank. This historic venue,
later christened<i> August Kranti Maidan</i>,
is, as the crow flies, a kilometer or so away from my childhood residence at 233 Khetwadi Main Road <a href="http://bit.ly/1fcggIG">http://bit.ly/1fcggIG</a> and a couple of
kilometers away from <i>that</i> musical corner
of Kalbadevi Road and Princess Street. That, boys and girls, is how and when I
first heard of Jack and Jill, Little Jack Horner, Hickory Dickory Dock, Little
Miss Muffet, Humpty Dumpty, Ol’ King Cole, the Quite Contrary Mary, the other
Mary with her Little Lamb, Old Mother Hubbard, Wee Willie Winkie, Little Boy
Blue, Three Wise Men of Gotham, Solomon Grundy, The Old Woman in a Shoe, Baby<b> </b>Bunting, Georgie Porgie, Itsy Bitsy
Spider, Jack Sprat, Little Bo Peep, Little Boy Blue among others. I became
aware of their celebrated eccentricities by and by. Only much, much later did I
read the various Freudian and post-modern reinterpretations of Mother Goose’s
handiwork that completely strips them of every shred of childlike innocence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
Deepak Mankarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16135017690358976557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27462576.post-2210375986518349422013-10-03T21:25:00.000-07:002013-10-03T21:25:31.259-07:00Adilshahi in Everest. <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Does
History repeat itself? I guess it does sometimes in strange (read “outrageous”)
ways. When I joined Everest Advertising in October 1976, I was hired by the 20<sup>th</sup>
century reincarnation of either the 4<sup>th</sup> or the 6<sup>th</sup> Adilshah
of Bijapur, judging solely by the coincidence of their first name being identical with the Everest despot's surname. I did not realize it then and there, of course. The scales fell from
my eyes only later when I recalled how the place had been run like a Sultanate
with an iron fist in a <i>faux</i> ambience
of camaraderie and shared authority. The short-statured Sultan was a triumph of
sartorial artistry par excellence, always impeccably attired in pin-striped
suits and well groomed to the hilt. His smoke was Dunhill in the maroon and
gold twin pack. The everyday facial expression he wore when he strutted about
among us minions was a regally supercilious scowl. It did a disappearing act,
though, when he was in the presence of a client. In his durbar, there was a
pecking order among his courtiers, some being more equal than others. The
Sultanate had been subdivided among <i>jagirs</i>.
These had been handed over to various courtiers who enjoyed privileges
commensurate with the extent of loyalty they showed to the Sultan. Queer sort
of a fellow was our Sultan, both figuratively and literally. Those were the
days when, for a person in his socio-economic situation, the whole world was
his closet. He had a lot of fellow travelers in the advertising business. When
he was interviewing me for the job of a creative chief, he had, I remember, stoutly
taken umbrage over a press ad series for room air conditioners in my portfolio
that I happened to be rather proud of. He found them objectionable, he said,
because the headlines addressed to the family head used sexist phrases like “Lord and
master”. I tried to explain that it was tongue-in-cheek as could be judged from
the tone of the rest of the text. He disdainfully brushed aside my argument.
Ironically, as the Sultan himself revealed in a weaker moment during one of his
daily walking tours of the Sultanate, he thought the secretaries of his
courtiers-in-chief were “office wives” and expected them to display the same
degree of fealty as their real-life wives. It was rumoured that, in at least
two cases, his word was literally taken as God’s own truth by the minions
concerned. At the time of my joining, Everest was in a creative trough. People
thought their ads were so-so. Or, to call a spade a spade, mediocre. When I
started writing for the agency, my work especially for Swissair suddenly caught
the eye of the market. Clients started ringing the doorbell. The Sultan was
happy but excessively frugal in his praise and rewards. He had learned his
statecraft well from the British. Divide and rule. He decided in his infinite
wisdom to divide the creative <i>jagir</i> down
the middle making me the copy head and leaving the art honchodom in somebody
else’s hands. To put me in my place so to speak, he invited the Court Jester to
the Swissair plans board. But, do what he might, the fact remained that his
annual all-expenses-paid junket to Zurich needed my best efforts. Fortunately,
for an unusually long stretch of 13 years, the success run of Swissair creative
continued. A few years after my <i>adieu</i>
to Everest, the Sultan met his Waterloo at the hands of a bizarre Nelson: the
daughter of Everest’s founder. His own
trusted courtiers-in-chief including the Court Jester too betrayed him. The
bells tolled tumultuously no more for the strutting tyrant. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
Deepak Mankarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16135017690358976557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27462576.post-33873759059503831972013-09-18T20:14:00.000-07:002013-09-18T20:28:48.402-07:00Lamb among wolves.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Reading
an excerpt of Jhumpa Lahiri’s Man Booker nominated <i>The Lowland </i><a href="http://nyr.kr/17RVhVo">http://nyr.kr/17RVhVo</a>
the other day, I remembered a long-lost old friend. His name was Shyam Guha. He
was an Art Director in the Calcutta office of Clarion-McCann. <a href="http://bit.ly/Hls6wJ">http://bit.ly/Hls6wJ</a> I got to know him rather
well in the late sixties and early seventies. We became friends working together
on ad assignments on most of his fairly frequent visits to the Bombay office. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Shyam
was a gem of a human being. He was probably the only innocent and guileless Bengali
I came across in Clarion’s <i>Bhadralok</i>
mafia during the eleven years, seven months and four days I worked for the
agency. He was loved – nay, revered – by all the studio guys although none of
us could quite fathom the reasons for him being invited once too often to
Bombay because we had a surfeit of Art Directors and Visualizers of our own. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Rumour
had it that the guys sent by the head office suits were spooks trained to keep
an eye on the locals and report back. None of us believed it of Shyam, though.
In fact, we used to look forward to his visits eagerly. I used to rib him about
the spooks business and he would take it sportingly. There was definitely some
truth in the 007 rumour, though. There definitely were spies from the Bong skies
among us. One of them was a suit who chewed the bones as well as the meat of a
chicken dish served to him. I can vouch for this trait confidently as he used
to come home to dinner at 233 Khetwadi Main Road <a href="http://bit.ly/Hls6wJ">http://bit.ly/Hls6wJ</a>
at times. The other was a creative guy who would visit us occasionally and
spend the whole working day strolling around the office presumably trying to
catch snatches of conversation in the corridors and at the water fountain. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">As
for Shyam and I, sometimes, we would taxi down to the Strand Book Stall during
the lunch break for a quick browse. I remember Shyam gifting me a copy of the
Marguerite Duras screenplay of <i>Hiroshima
Mon Amour</i>, a Calder & Boyars paperback wit<a href="" name="_GoBack"></a>h the
signature black and white cover. Shyam also regaled me with his tales of almost
daily after-work tippling at the legendary Calcutta landmark, Olympia Bar <a href="http://bit.ly/15YWMfH">http://bit.ly/15YWMfH</a> in the company of his
like-minded colleagues. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">His
other repertoire of stories included those about the Naxalites who then were a
recent addition to the Calcutta scenario. Both of us were sympathetic to the
cause these urban guerillas were battling for. Shyam did not seem to know any
of the Naxals or their families personally. He also had not witnessed any of
the street battles. What he was passing on to us was chiefly hearsay although
his narratives were always compelling and riveting. Whenever he came home to
dinner, this was one topic of conversation Ujwal and I used to look forward to
listening. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">During
his Bombay sojourn, Shyam usually lodged with the Bombay Resident Director,
Subrato Sen Gupta, now deceased. The Sen Guptas apparently did not have a spare
latch key for the front door of their palatial Neapean Sea Road flat. So Shyam
had a curfew to observe whenever he planned an evening out. He had to be back
and in bed by 11:00 p.m., the family retiring hour, exactly one hour before the
witching hour. This deadline was the theme of our favourite parting shot every
time he took our leave hurriedly and distractedly after dinner. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">By
the time I decided to quit Clarion in 1976, Shyam’s visits to the Bombay office
had petered out. We lost touch with each other because both of us were bad
letter writers. The “out of sight, out of mind” bug was also probably at work. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<h3>
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; font-weight: normal; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">I picked up the threads of the
Shyam Guha episode once again much, much later. In the late nineties, to be
exact. I got acquainted with a Calcuttan on-line because of my column on the Hindustan
Times website at that time. Well educated and cultured, she was married to a
widely-connected advertising guy. She happened to mention Prasanto Sanyal and other
denizens of the Clarion <i>Bhadralok</i> in
one of her emails. I promptly asked her if she could get her husband to trace
the whereabouts of Shyam. Much to my chagrin, after a bit of to-ing and
fro-ing, her spouse hit a dead end in his pursuit of my will-o’-the-wisp. There
was no Shyam to be found. It seemed he had retired from Clarion long ago and moved
bag and baggage out of the metropolis for <i>terra
incognita.</i> <o:p></o:p></span></h3>
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></div>
</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</div>
Deepak Mankarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16135017690358976557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27462576.post-88458660035571743022013-09-04T20:05:00.000-07:002013-09-04T20:16:20.288-07:00The wearisome burden of superheroism. <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In his fifth voyage, Sinbad came across a taciturn old
man inhabiting the island where the Arabian Nights sailor was marooned. This
worthy hopped on to Sinbad’s shoulder with his tacit consent and then refused
to let go of his seat. Finally, according to Scheherazade, Sinbad had no
alternative except to get his tormentor drunk and stone him to death. <a href="http://bit.ly/17FCKJL">http://bit.ly/17FCKJL</a> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Ever since the US of A usurped the role of World
Supremo – did it happen in 1898 when it declared war on Spain and with the
Paris treaty wrested virtual suzerainty over South America and the Philippines?
– the mantle has rested heavily on its shoulder. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In the wake of Japan’s victory over Russia in 1905,
President Theodore Roosevelt dispatched his Great White Fleet of 16 battleships
with assorted escorts on a 14-month global cruise in order to demonstrate his
country’s naval capabilities and preparedness. (Remember Nixon and Kissinger
sending the US Fifth Fleet post haste to the Bay of Bengal in 1971?) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Once you’re on the superhero/superpower throne, it’s
not easy to abdicate. You’ve got to keep on playing the role, like it or not. (Lord
Acton’s axiom: </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts
absolutely. <i>Great men are almost always
bad men.</i>"</span> Note: Italics mine.<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">) America did try to keep aloof in
the Great War till Germany used U-boats thus forcing President Woodrow Wilson’s
hand in early 1917. America’s entry on the Allied side in World War II too was
belated: it only entered the theatre after the Japanese Navy attacked Pearl Harbour
on 7 December 1941. (By the way, by a strange twist of Fate, Captain America
had become Marvel Comics’ top selling title at around this time clocking a monthly
sale of as many as one million copies. <u>Point to ponder</u>: <i>Why is a majority of comicbook superheroes
born in the USA?</i>)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">What has always surprised me, though, is how Uncle
Sam never got his fingers entangled into the Great Game – the on-going strategic
rivalry for supremacy in Central Asia between the British Empire and the Russian
Empire (and, after 1918, Soviet Union) – during its heyday. The American
intervention in the Afghan Civil War was in fact as late as in 1979 as a Cold-War
related retaliation to the Soviet initiative in the region and later directly
when the Russian withdrawal left a power vacuum there. After the World War II victory,
there have been many more episodes in the overseas adventures of Uncle Sam in
his Captain America avatar: Korea, Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, Cambodia, the Gulf
War, Iraq, and now maybe Syria – apart from his several covert interventions on
the side of Banana Republic chief honchos. When you have the world’s biggest stake
in armaments, covet the world’s oil reserves most avidly and have always fancied
yourself in the role of World Supremo, you don’t have much of a chance. Or, choice,
for that matter. You’ve got to carry your burden, trudge with it and like it or
lump it. Unless you decide to emulate Sinbad’s “carved in stone” example… </span></div>
</div>
Deepak Mankarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16135017690358976557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27462576.post-33110015611745073142013-08-29T17:11:00.000-07:002013-08-30T18:49:09.974-07:00 The rise and rise of rape in India.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">There has been an alarming rise in the incidence of rape of
late. This is causing much bewilderment and trepidation in so far as the crime
is keeping pace with the measures taken to arrest or lessen its occurrence as
well as the widespread publicity generated by the epidemic. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I discern at least
two equally powerful triggers for this intriguing phenomenon. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">First among equals is the galloping pace of
pro-feminist reforms and the accompanying fanfare they receive in media and
word of mouth. This raises the anti-feminist’s heckles. They yearn to strike
back. And what better way to do it than to go rape, molest, insult, humiliate “those
pesky bitches”? Rape is a crime of power, not passion. In the present instance,
it is the rapist’s response to the women’s increasing empowerment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The second trigger is the nationwide – nay, worldwide –
media coverage that each succeeding gang rape in India has been receiving of
late. In the rapist’s sick mind, committing this horrendous crime of power in
the company of like-thinking comrades seems to be an easy way of getting and
basking in his fifteen seconds of fame. Labyrinthine and convoluted though this
logic may seem, that’s the way the cookie crumbles in the rapist’s twilight zone,
I’m afraid. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">If both these triggers are currently at work, what is
the way to slow down the occurrence of rape in India? Should the pace of
pro-feminist reforms be slowed down? Should the fanfare that is their due be somewhat
subdued? My off-the-cuff response is No to the first course of action and Yes
to the second. My Yes response may be owing to my antipathy towards the way
Indians and Indian media respond to anything: way over the top – so much so
that for the potential rapist, rape has virtually become a cult!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Is there a way to nip a potential rapist in the bud? Caution
and vigilance on the part of women stepping out of the safety of home and
workplace as well as the law and order functionaries seems to be the partial –
though not totally satisfactory – solution. Is there a way to identify and tag potential
rapists before they crawl out of the crack and go on a rampage? Truth to tell,
I don’t know.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
Deepak Mankarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16135017690358976557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27462576.post-20191039637989969292013-07-23T17:19:00.000-07:002013-07-23T17:19:38.581-07:00Unfinished but not imperfect. Not by a long shot.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Go
figure. For the life of me, I have not so far been able to understand why
unfinished novels fascinate me. Could it be because they were works-in-progress
that got interrupted by the author’s death, thus doomed to never get finished? Or,
is it because, in Italo Calvino’s words, “A classic is a book which has never
exhausted all it has to say to its readers.”? </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://bit.ly/16NkyvQ"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">http://bit.ly/16NkyvQ</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Here are the three unfinished works-in-progress that
enthralled me, listed here in the order of their appearance in my life as a
reader: Truman Capote’s <i>Answered Prayers</i>; Kurt Vonnegut’s <i>If God Were Alive Today</i>; and, last
though by no means the least, F Scott Fitzgerald’s <i>The Last Tycoon. </i>Curiously, all three were by writers who were besieged
by alcoholism and/or substance abuse and all three are about celebrity and, in
varying degrees, celebrity-bashing. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12.0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">A
distinguishing characteristic of Capote’s book (he called it his “posthumous
novel” on the Dick Cavell show in May 1971, thirteen years prior to his death),
peopled by Unspoiled (and Spoiled) Monsters, is a cavalcade of NHRN characters
flitting across its terrain. NHRN ( = Not His/Her Real Name) because in </span><i style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Answered Prayers</i><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">, Capote put into
practice his belief expressed in his </span><i style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Playboy</i><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">
December 1976 interview, viz., “All literature is gossip.” He bravely – almost
stoically – endured the wrath of − and ostracization by − his high-society
friends for letting the skeletons tumble out of their celebrity closets by the
advanced publication of excerpts from his work-in-progress. I was bemused by
his trashing of celebrity and enjoyed the writing that no doubt is simply
dishy. I have a feeling that being outrageous in all he did and said had by the
end of his life become his chief </span><i style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">oeuvre</i><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">.
This is what Capote said about himself: “I don’t know anybody who gets as much
publicity as I do for doing nothing.” And, this is how he dismissed Jack
Kerouac’s </span><i style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">On The Road</i><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">: “It is not
writing. It is only typing.” Dorothy Parker agreed with his pronouncement. James
Michener who by his own admission knew Capote “tangentially” wrote that he knew
“four of the people T.C. lacerates” in </span><i style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Answered
Prayers </i><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">– which he thought was “[a] proctologist’s view of American
society” but nonetheless capable of becoming “the roman à clef of my decade” –
in the Proustian vein – if only Capote managed to complete it.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In
<i>If God Were Alive Today</i>, Vonnegut too
is engaged in a similar pursuit – celebrity mauling − although the characters
don’t seem to be inspired by real people. The chief protagonist is a standup
comic clearly off his rocker. He has been to the loony bin twice. Vonnegut’s
take on politics and American values is often devastatingly cynical,
occasionally hilarious and at times over-the-top bonkers especially because of Gil
Berman’s overlong rants. Chances are, Vonnegut might have trimmed and polished
the spiel had Death stayed its hand a little longer. In her interview in the <i>Rumpus</i> magazine </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://bit.ly/1dKW3TV"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">http://bit.ly/1dKW3TV</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> Vonnegut’s youngest daughter,
Nanette, mentions her son’s opinion that Gil Berman would never have made it to
the stage. It’s view worth keeping in mind as the said son is a practicing
standup comic, no less. Well, well, well, summing up the world’s status in
Vonnegut’s own words: “If God were alive today, he would have to be an atheist,
because the excrement has hit the air-conditioning big time, big time.” </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://bit.ly/15uXD9x"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">http://bit.ly/15uXD9x</span></a></span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: windowtext; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: windowtext; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">I read <i>The Last Tycoon</i> recently
in its Penguin Modern Classic avatar. Fitzgerald’s close friend, Edmund Wilson,
was the editor. He also wrote a brief introduction. In this incarnation, it
includes the first six chapters followed by the author’s notes on the cast of
characters and alternative plot development pathways. Publisher’s Weekly’s
review of Matthew J Bruccoli’s critical edition of the novel </span></span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://bit.ly/17swohl"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">http://bit.ly/17swohl</span></a></span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: windowtext; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> hints at it too
being a </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">roman à clef about Hollywood in the nineteen-thirties. The power struggle
between MGM producer Irving Thalberg (Monroe Stahr, the chief protagonist)<span class="MsoHyperlink"><span style="color: windowtext;"> and MGM chief honcho Louis B Mayer (Pat Brady) presumably
based on Fitzgerald’s personal observations of life in Hollywood during his
sojourn there as a scriptwriter for MGM, Twentieth-Century Fox, United Artists
and other studios from 1937 to 1940, was to form the core of the novel. The
first six chapters in the Wilson-edited version in which the story seems to be
about halfway developed barely suggests this, though. It is only when you go
through the supplementary material that you begin to get a vague idea of what a
rousingly powerful story it could have been had the author been able to
complete it. Even in its truncated form, it is quite an absorbing read.
Fitzgerald’s notes give the reader an opportunity to observe at close quarters
how a master storyteller shapes his material and steers his narrative. In a
review of <i>The Last Tycoon</i> (New York
Times, 9 November 1941) </span></span></span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://nyti.ms/18y5lWl"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">http://nyti.ms/18y5lWl</span></a></span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: windowtext; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> J Donald Adams,
apparently a regular contributor, expressed his view that Fitzgerald was particularly
suited to write about Hollywood “inside out” because he was a “romantic
realist”. By this phrase, he implied that Fitzgerald possessed in abundance “</span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">a lively sense of the
fantastic” combined with “intuitive perceptions”, in addition to an insider’s
knowledge of how the system worked owing to a fairly long stay there. He also
cites this observation of Peter Monro Jack, Professor and Chair of Rhetoric,
University of Michigan (1927-1930): "Had his extraordinary gifts met with
an early astringent criticism and a decisive set of values, he might very well
have been the Proust of his generation instead of the desperate sort of Punch
that he is." That, indeed, is high praise.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
Deepak Mankarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16135017690358976557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27462576.post-29740480193547779442013-07-10T21:13:00.000-07:002013-07-10T21:13:27.100-07:00One picture is worth a thousand words. A proverb made in China, no less?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12.0pt;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;">Reading about Sergey Brin’s “epiphany” concerning a
new language of digital communication </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://nyti.ms/1a4IAGu"><span style="line-height: 115%;">http://nyti.ms/1a4IAGu</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;"> took me to my early days
in advertising. There used to be an ongoing argument between writers and art
directors about the relative prominence for copy vis-à-vis the pictorial
elements in print ads. “One picture is worth a thousand” used to be the
favourite last word on the subject uttered by the commercial artists some of whom
fancied themselves to be Gauguins, van Goghs, Cézannes and Warhols of the ad
world. I must confess, at the cost of sounding like a condescending snob, that
not even two or three out of a score of them had even heard the names. The
writers, on the other hand, were comparatively better informed. They would at
least have taken the trouble to browse through the horrendously expensive,
large-format, hard-bound tomes on occidental art direction strewn about in the
studio space while waiting patiently for the nose-in-the-air art directors to
give them a few moments of their precious time. This apparently was also the often
uttered battle cry of marketers against competitors wielding catalogues as
their marketing weapon and in similar skirmishes in the US marketplace in the early
20<sup>th</sup> century. <a href="http://bit.ly/16YUXCi">http://bit.ly/16YUXCi</a>
This reminds me of what Ivan Turgenev wrote
in <i>Fathers and Sons </i>(1862): <span style="background: #FCFCFC;">“The drawing shows me at a glance what would be
spread over ten pages in a book.”</span> </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://bit.ly/14XxHDk"><span style="line-height: 115%;">http://bit.ly/14XxHDk</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;"> Turgenev, in case you
missed it, was the “father” of the term “nihilism”. And, the just cited remark
by Bazarov, the chief protagonist of <i>Fathers
and Sons </i>who was a nihilist and a medical student, was made in connection
with the geological formation of Saxon mountains – a conversation ploy he
employed with his friends while feigning no interest in art. This is the right
moment, folks, to hark back to Brin’s epiphany. It suddenly dawned on him that,
in a digital milieu where Twitter posts are “hyper-abbreviated”, a single
photograph clicked on one’s mobile phone was eloquent enough to answer a
textual query – without a textual or verbal addendum. Pictures have become text-substitutes, in
short. Talk of word pictures? It’s happening here and now. So, photography is
no more only for keeping a record of the past. Instead it is used to record <i>this</i> moment. A mobile photo messaging app
for Android called Snapchat </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://bit.ly/12T8Ayn"><span style="line-height: 115%;">http://bit.ly/12T8Ayn</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;"> lets a cellphone user
shoot a picture or a video, send it to a friend and control how long it will be
visible (up to 10 seconds) after which it vanishes forever as if it never
existed in the first place. Twitter’s Vine
is happy with a 6-second lifespan for the visual while Facebook’s Instagram
stretches it to 15 seconds. Finally, to place the matter in the larger
perspective, think about what Guy-Ernest Debord wrote </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://bit.ly/1a7p9Nr"><span style="line-height: 115%;">http://bit.ly/1a7p9Nr</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;"> in <i>The Society of the Spectacle</i>, supposedly the blueprint for the Parisian
student revolt of 1968: </span><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #333333; line-height: 115%;">"The
</span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: large;">spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social
relation among people, mediated by images." This was one whole year before
the uprising. In the same book, he also wrote: "In societies where modern
conditions of production prevail, all life presents as an immense accumulation
of<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">spectacles</span></em>. Everything that
was directly lived has moved away into a representation." Technology has
finally made sense of his vision. Or, so it seems. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</div>
Deepak Mankarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16135017690358976557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27462576.post-21246853698713935902013-07-04T20:06:00.000-07:002013-07-04T20:06:05.369-07:00Spare me this day self-promotion by celebrities, Beelzebub.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Yesterday must have been my bad scare day. No, the
Lord of the Flies did not intrude in my early-morning dream. I woke up much
later than usual, though. Thirty past six, to be exact. Like me, the newsboy
too arrived late. But that’s hardly unusual for him. As I was doing some stuff
on my PC, I did not get my hands on Bombay Times, my habitual <i>entrée</i> to daily news read via its comic
strips till well past nine forty-five or thereabouts. As (bad) luck would have
it, on turning the <i>faux</i> front page my
eyes were ambushed by a headline that said: “I apologized to Milkhaji’s wife
for not having written a love song for her”. <a href="http://bit.ly/17WM5l4">http://bit.ly/17WM5l4</a>
Without a thought for the consequences and breaking my habit of reading nothing
except the comic strips and the SMS Joke in Bombay Times, I plunged headlong
into one of the most skillfully plotted pieces of celebrity self-promotion I
have come across in my whole life. Were you to accept all that you read in it,
you will no doubt arrive at the following conclusions:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">1. Unlike other mere mortals, Prasoon Joshi was born
with a silver pen – not spoon − in his mouth. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">2. Despite PJ’s parents’ assiduous efforts at
gathering <i>kafal</i> – a berry specie
nearing extinction – to feed him and despite PJ’s own ability to hear the faintly
murmured message from Mother Nature about the coming extinction, poor <i>kafal</i> went the way of all flesh. Alas,
in spite of his super hearing abilities beyond the ken of mere mortals, PJ
could not save his beloved Uttarakhand in its hour of direst need when Mother
Nature was shrieking at the top of her voice. I guess even super heroes have
their bad hear days. What a sad PJ, sir<i>ji</i>!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">3. In the best of Bollywood and telly tradition, our
hero had a widowed, white sari-wearing <i>nani</i>
who educated herself against all odds, became first a teacher and later the
school’s head honcho. With a Grade-A singer cum book author in <i>Pahadi</i> for a mom and a Director of
Education for a dad, our hero with his exclusive nighttime access to a library in
Meerut was well set to become a Grade-A jingle writer. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">4. Our hero is far superior, in his own reckoning, to
his erstwhile boss who he says is a patriarch. (Oh, oh! We know where this is leading
to with violence against women hogging the daily headlines, don’t we?) Our hero
also says that he has “no ego when it comes to accepting women as equals. Of
course, our hero has magnanimously accepted his former boss’s difficulty in
treating him as his equal. Needless to say, our hero confesses to being more
into music and poetry than his ex-boss as also to needing his space and silence
as compared to his ex-boss’s preference for being "always" surrounded by “more and more
people”. So who is the better and more sensitive human being, boys and girls?
Tell me, tell me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">5. In his infinite compassion for the female of the
species, PJ actually said sorry to Mrs. Milkha Singh for not excluding her from
a film on her husband.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">6. The only reason our hero tolerates Mumbai: his idol
Gulzar also lives there. He is not there for the money, folks – the filthy <i>lucre</i> that he gets for writing ad
jingles and film songs, and, now film scripts. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">One could go on and on like this until one puked all over the page at
the sheer gall of it all. Running down others is no way to prove one’s
superiority as a human being. Equally, no amount of fudging with facts or
playing with words no matter how poetically you do it can achieve it, either. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">But celebrity can turn one’s head, I guess. Your sense
of entitlement gets grossly and unhealthily enhanced. You want the world to
acknowledge your greatness, your superiority every waking moment. You deserve
it, damn it! If worse comes to worse, there is always the pay-as-you-go route.
I’m told many publications don’t mind bending the rules these days. News
mimicking ads, you see. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
Deepak Mankarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16135017690358976557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27462576.post-22002164131223500442013-04-22T18:19:00.000-07:002013-05-05T21:56:36.666-07:00How to “read” a book before buying.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Zounds! Truth
to tell, I’ve been waiting all my life to use this expletive in the right
context. I remember it being an often-used favourite of Porthos in the Classic
Comics/Classic Illustrated (the series died a long time back, I gather) rendition
of <i>The Three Musketeers</i> (1941)<i>.</i> It caught my eye – and my fancy – <i>there</i> rather than while reading the Cassel’s
yellow-jacketed edition of the Dumas classic. My use of “Zounds!” in the
present case is more than justified in my shrewd estimation. It expresses my
feeling of delight at having resisted resolutely the temptation of using a
clichéd heading for this post, e.g., “Never judge a book by its cover.”
(Frankly, though, I’ve followed that advice profitably on several book buying
expeditions.) This “Zounds” also gleefully acknowledges my having finally stumbled
upon the opportunity to fearlessly write “Zounds!” As you can see, the brief
and to-the-point title I chose has just the right tinge of intrigue added to
it by the <i>read</i> in quotes. As it must
have dawned on all my intelligent and perceptive readers by now, I am about to deliver, in my capacity
as a veteran book reader and bibliophile of long standing, a
how-to-do-it-yourself sermon on picking really worthwhile books in a bookshop
or a book sale. Skip it at your own peril, boys and girls, especially if you
don’t want to live the rest of your life buying and reading trash. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Here, now then,
in brief, is my <i>modus operandi</i> of
book buying. Once I enter a book shop or a book sale and start browsing, I
allow an attractive book cover or an alluring book title to catch my eye. If
the book seems to be within the ambit of my varied and catholic interests – and
limited budget (yes, I tend to be a somewhat price-conscious book shopper which
explains my preference for Strand Book Stall and book sales which the late and
lamented Arun Kolhatkar too used to frequent probably for the same reasons), I
pick it up and read the blurb on the back cover and elsewhere. (Glancing
furtively over my shoulder to make sure nobody’s looking; I also take a hurried
whiff of its new-book “fresh from the press” fragrance. Fungal hallucinogens
alert for those of you who crave the “old book aroma”: Research suggests that
sniffing old books infested with fungi may give the unsuspecting sniffer a
“high”. <a bit.ly="" href="http://www.blogger.com/%E2%80%9D" http:="">
http://bit.ly/S4545W</a>) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">I’m rather partial
to relevantly catchy book titles, I must sheepishly confess. Maybe the
copywriter in me is to blame for this blemish. Let me also add that, in most
cases, I have not regretted falling for the alluring charms of such a
come-hither. A recent example is my purchase of Martin Lindstrom’s <i>Buy.ology</i> (Random House, New York, 2009).
The copywriter in me found the book utterly delightful and extremely enlightening
– worth much more than the Rs.425/- less 20% price I shelled out for it in
Strand Book Stall. Another rewarding purchase going merely by the front-cover
names-dropping is Laurie Rozakis’ <i>Comma
Sutra </i>(Adam Media Avon, Massachusetts, 2005), also from Strand. A third
example is Patrick Scrivenor’s <i>I Used to
Know That ENGLISH</i> (Michael O’Mara Books, London, 2010), bought in an Ashish
Book Centre sale not so long ago. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">I would be
lying through my teeth were I to claim that I have never been laid astray by a tempting
title. A glaring example is Stephen Markley’s <i>Publish This Book</i> (Sourcebooks, Illinois, 2010) that was tagged by
the publisher promisingly as “Humour/Memoir” but turned out a dud and a drag
and a waste of money and time. It is not badly written, mind you. It has its
moments of genuine humour but is so stretched out that it tests the reader’s
patience to the fullest extent without rewarding him commensurately in return.
As the Good Bard would have likely said, “Much Ado about Nothing”, or rather
nothing much! Could I, as an unpublished author, have wanted to share the agony
of an about-to-be-published author’s rites of passage through purgatory?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">If the blurb
has whetted my appetite for further enlightenment, I go to the publication
details which include the International Standard Book Number (ISBN) and
copyright information (in other words, the publishing history of the book in my
hands). This is printed behind the title page also known as “verso”. I’m always
interested in knowing when the book was first published and which edition of it
I’m holding in my hands. I do possess quite a few first editions although I’m
not a first-edition collector in the real sense. The price permitting, I prefer
hardbound books to paperbacks; likewise, new to second-hand; likewise, genuine to
contraband, i.e., pirated. (Recently, however, New York Times told me that a
hardcover book’s spine could be an ideal hideaway for bedbugs and their eggs.
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/%E2%80%9Dhttp://nyti.ms/UFnyc0">http://nyti.ms/UFnyc0</a> The
University of Washington Library was among the first few to discover this
menace. Question: Could the bedbug menace be used to promote ebooks?) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">What I usually
do after reading the publication details is to turn to the back of the book
looking for an index. Show me a book with an index in its tail and I will show
you a book that’s brimming with its own importance as a future reference
source. Jokes aside, I adore simply books with indexes. They’re mostly
non-fiction, though. An index makes it easy for me to quickly locate those
parts of a book that I enjoyed most when I first read it and which I now want
to reread. An index, in other words, is akin to a Jurassic Park imitation of a website’s
own internal search engine, after all. Other telling backend clues to the
writer’s presentation skills and dedication to his subject are an appendix (or
appendices), a compendium of footnotes, glossary and a further readings list. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">For me, a
cast-of-characters listing is a useful indicator of the likely quality of
content. When there is a huge galaxy of characters populating a novel, it is a
real help to have a reference point to which you can keep returning to reorient
yourself if and when you have kind of lost your way in the narrative. Most
reading – and, of course, performing – editions of plays have a
cast-of-characters page by definition as it were. I fondly remember – and
sorely miss – the early Ellery Queen mystery novels with their long cast of
characters, a cast-of-characters listing to match and, last but not least, the
challenge to the reader to name the murderer (or “the perp” in contemporary
lingo) before the Master revealed all. Some of the early Agatha Christie novels
had the c-o-c listings too. I used to own all those wonderful Ellery Queen and
Agatha Christie mysteries mostly paperbacks. I can almost see those scrumptious
Ellery Queens in their signature Penguin paperbacks in a green-with-a-white-centre-band
jacket. Alas, I lost all that precious caché out of sheer carelessness. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Before I say <i>adieu</i>, take a look at this: <a href="http://www.blogger.com/%E2%80%9Dhttp://bit.ly/Y17srx">http://bit.ly/Y17srx</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Deepak Mankarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16135017690358976557noreply@blogger.com