PIs and I.

Detective fiction is a genre I've enjoyed all my life. I remember my father buying me a hardbound copy of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, published by John Murray. This happened to be in one of my childhood summers at 233 Khetwadi Main Road http://digbig.com/4xyxy. I was recuperating then from a severe bout of tonsillitis. I used to suffer from this ailment not infrequently at that time and was a frequent user of glycerin acid tannic, "the throat 'paint' of choice". http://digbig.com/4yarg. Sorry for the digression. After devouring the first collection of short stories and getting well, I was hooked on Holmes. I rapidly ploughed through the entire "Canon": 4 novels and 56 short stories written by Sir Arthur Conon Doyle between 1887 and 1927 - a total of 660382 words according to Charles E Lauterbach's calculation in 1960. Holmes had a special appeal for me because, like me, he preferred to sit down and ratiocinate. http://digbig.com/4yaty. I'm not saying my deductive logical ability was a patch on his legendary though fictional one, of course. To continue the story, I made a logical progression to Agatha Christie's inimitable egghead, Hercule Poirot and, thence, to Miss Marple http://digbig.com/4yatm in the last year of school and, later, in college. Ellery Queen, reputedly the American heir to the Holmesian legacy, happened somewhere along the way. I remember being particularly impressed at that time with the way a challenge to the reader used to be thrown towards the end of the earlier EQ novels when the reader was supposed to have been given all the essential clues. I had even read and enjoyed the four Drury Lane novels written by Queen under the Barnby Ross nom de plume. These, I recall, belonged to the locked room mystery sub-genre, a format of which John Dickson Carr was a leading practitioner. For a while around then, I was a steady follower of Mike Shayne, the Miami PI, as well. Then, the focus of my attention shifted to Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason. I began to think that thinking on one's feet and wisecracking in a trial court was the height of sophistication. Then I discovered his Donald Lam and Bertha Cool series written under his AA Fair pseudonym and found it far more witty and entertaining. My meeting with The Saint http://digbig.com/4yfre I recall, was fortuitous. I happened to browse through a Saint novel at the shop on Lamington Road http://digbig.com/4ybgc where I used to borrow comics and other reading material when I was in college. I was taken in by the flippant style and tone. I went on a pilgrimage of Saintly reading borrowing all the titles in the circulating library and even buying a few second-hand titles. Another source of my detective literature supply was the JB Petit Institute at Flora Fountain of which my father and I were members. I read quite a bit of Edgar Wallace http://digbig.com/4ybge there, including a book of hilarious short stories about a race course tout. I remember its red binding distinctly but have forgotten its name. I read, if memory serves, almost all Dorothy L Sayers (Lord Wimsey) mysteries and some by Georges Simenon (Maigret is no PI, mind!) and Rex Stout, all borrowed from the Institute as well. Dick Francis came later and became for a while quite an addiction. The Institute also gave me the opportunity to enjoy Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine for several years. Although I have not read much of Patricia Highsmith and Nicolas Freeling, I hold them both in high esteem. I must confess that although I read some of Ross MacDonald, he didn't appeal to me much. Neither for that matter did Raymond Chandler who considered himself a mere pulp writer but was the toast of the British literary and intellectual circles including notably JB Priestley, WH Auden, Cyril Connolly and Edith Sitwell. Maybe, I ain't no mystery connoisseur in verity.

Gandhi, yet again.

This morning, I suddenly thought again of Gandhi. It occurred to me that he could never be at peace no matter what he was doing, no matter who he was dealing with. I was thinking particularly of his reaction to his son Manilal's infatuation in 1914 for Jeki (Dr Jayakunwar Mehta). She was Gandhi's "only adopted daughter" and the real daughter of his affluent and generous friend from his London days, Dr Pranjivan Jagjivan Mehta. The latter had left her in Gandhi's care in Phoenix Farm, South Africa. As was his wont http://digbig.com/4yaae Gandhi simply would not let things get back to a semblance of normalcy. He was unwilling to forget and forgive. Sex was his big obsession. He spoke again and again about the transgression in his prayer meetings, went on a fast, and generally raised hell. He also made Jeki shear off her hair, go off salt and so forth. http://digbig.com/4yaaf. In his letter to his associate, Kallenbach, he called the young woman "a liar, a wretched hypocrite, without pity, without remorse, full of evil passions". Earlier, when Kasturba had complained bitterly against Jeki, he had defended her and turned on his wife labeling her "the most venomous woman I have ever met" again in a letter to Kallenbach. He had even expressed his wish for her death at one juncture. As for his own reaction to the man-woman interaction: "I have often wanted to take out the knife from my pocket and put it through the stomach," he confided in a letter to to another friend. "Sometimes I have felt like striking my head against the wall opposite, and at other times, I have thought of running away from the world." This kind of behaviour was a recurrent theme in Gandhi's life throughout, especially in his various relationships with his women associates. Of course, men know at first hand women's capacity to make them think and feel in a like manner. Being a Mahatma had not spared him from being a man unfortunately, I guess.

Easy way out.

The second instance of my quitting a pursuit after a brief flirtation - the account of the first one is here http://digbig.com/4xyxq - was when I was an enthusiastic philatelist for maybe a couple of years of school. How I started collecting postage stamps escapes me. My best guess is that I must have seen someone's stamp album and jumped to the conclusion that it was the thing to do. My parents used to indulge me probably because I was a boy. I remember I had a hard bound dark green 12" x 9" stamp album about ¾" thick. Each page in it had the name of a country printed on top with a couple of pictures of the more popular stamps issued by it on both sides of it. The portion below was divided into several spaces for stamps indicated by dotted squares. I remember buying the album, along with a shiny pair of tweezers, from one of the philately supply dealers on Hornby Road (now Dadabhai Nowroji Road) http://digbig.com/4xyxs. The shop is probably still there. I also used to buy from the same shop a packet of pre-gummed hinges made of butter paper. One had to simply fold the hinge halfway with the pre-gummed surface outside; lick it; stick one half to the back of the stamp and the other half to the surface of the page where the stamp was supposed to be stuck; and, lo and behold, one of your precious collection was where it belonged. I remember having a lot many India Postage stamps, even old ones retrived from the envelopes of old correspondence. We veteran stamp collectors also used to obtain stamps by barter. I don't quite recall who I used to exchange stamps with. There was a philatelist friend of mine staying in the third of the three identical Arab Houses. http://digbig.com/4xyxy. (I stayed at 233 Khetwadi Main Road in the first Arab House, you see.) He was probably the one through whom I had managed to find some bartering contacts. Also, some of my school friends may also have chipped in with bartering aid. We used to also buy stamps from the shop on Hornby Road I mentioned earlier as well as a shop on Lamington Road which also doubled as a comic book lending library. http://digbig.com/4xyxs. What one had to watch out for was in the stamps you bought to add to your collection was postal cancellation marks on them. That was supposed to prove that they were authentic postal issues - not imitations printed to fool new entrants in the august portals of philately. After wasting a bit of my father's hard-earned money for two or three years, I suddently lost interest in and zest for "the whole bally thing" (to use one of Wooster's eloquent phrases) and quit it as was my wont. [Afterthought: Now that email is the rule rather than the exception, I wonder if stamp collecting is a dying hobby.]

No pretensions.

Given my past pretensions galore as a movie aficionado http://digbig.com/4xypw it feels good to stumble upon a non-pretensions black-and-white movie with straight forward story-telling and no fancy camera work now and again. That's where TCM is so good for my soul, mates. Yesterday morning, I happened to find there the clunkily and portentously titled Our Vines Have Tender Grapes (1945). http://digbig.com/4xypx. It has that wonderfully versatile Romanian-American actor, Edward G Robinson, playing the part of a Norwegian farmer in Wisconsin during World War II. Martinus Jacobson is kind and considerate, very fond of his seven-year old daughter, Selma (Margaret O'Brien. He does not believe in spoiling her, though, and even makes her give away her skates, a birthday gift, to her 5-year-old best friend and constant companion, Arnold, because of her failure to share then with him. The simple story moves at a placid place and ends with Selma giving away her calf to a neighbour whose barn has burned down and thereby triggering off a flood of gifts from other members of the community. For a reason I could not fathom, this movie caught my attention and fancy and I could not stop myself from watching it till the end. An additional bonus was Agnes Moorehead in the role of Selma's mother and a simple housewife, so different from the many cynical and acerbic roles elsewhere I have always admired her for.

11 Just Men.

Edgar Wallace wrote in 1905 what went on to be accorded the status of a prototype or benchmark of the modern English mystery thriller, The Four Just Men. It was about four vigilantes who killed people in the cause of justice. To promote it, he launched a competition. The challenge was to guess the method to murder the Foreign Secretary that they would employ if he were to ratify an unjust law. This got The Daily Mail, the newspaper where he worked as a sub-editor into deep trouble. Wallace did not put a limiting clause in his competition rules to restrict the prize to a single winner. As it happened, there were several correct guessers. He did not have the money to pay them. To protect the good name of his newspaper, the owner had to loan £5000 to Wallace. He took it without a whit of gratitude and contrition and showed no hurry to repay the loan. His attitude and approach were far from just, to state the obvious. Money, I guess, does that to a lot many people. Did not The Bible warn us that the love of money is the root of all evil? Now it is doing likewise to Wallace's compatriots, the English cricket team. They have thrown caution to the winds and defied logic as many, including Pakistan's former skipper, Shahid Latif, feel, because of the big bucks BCCI has in its coffers. http://digbig.com/4xymq. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose, as the French say. Translation: The more things change, the more they stay the same. In other words, nothing changes much. So, what else is new? P.S: The English Team decided to give 50% of their match fee to the victims of the Mumbai massacre. Are they just or what?

Jessica Lall redux.

Light a candle in your window to show solidarity with the victims. We've heard this call before. Not just in Rang De Basanti but also in the aftermath of the acquittal by the Delhi District Court in the Jessica Lall murder trial. Lall, you'll recall, was a member of the Delhi High Society, a model and a celebrity barmaid on duty at Tamarind Court owned by socialite Bina Ramani. She did not belong to the hoi polloi. The uproar after the acquittal was triggered by the desire of the Delhi aristocracy to avenge one of its own. Who is the common man http://digbig.com/4xybn in urban India? RK Laxman has been following his exploits since 1961 in the pocket cartoon (You said it) on the front page of The Times of India. He has always drawn him and his wise-cracking wife to resemble denizens of the lower middle class stratum of Bombay. The couple was unlikely to ever wander into Wasabi, The Golden Dragon, Tiffin, The Sea Lounge, Kandahar, India Jones, Frangapani, Zodiac Grill and eateries of the fine dining persuasion. Apart from whether they could afford to eat in any one of them, I wonder if the otherwise affable Sardarjis who used to guard the entrance of The Taj and probably of The Trident and The Oberoi would have allowed them to walk in. They were probably more likely to be embroiled in the massacre at the CST Terminus. Or, be waiting for a Western Railway local train to arrive at one of the seven stations where bomb blasts took place on 11 July 2006. With 200 dead and over 700 injured - mostly from the hoi polloi, that one was a terrorist attack of no mean proportion. Despite the loss of human life being much higher than in the 26-29 November 2008 tragedy, there was at that time no braying for the blood of those in charge of the security of Mumbai and the safety of its citizens. Come 26 November 2008 with a frontal attack on the three aristocratic and supposedly secure SoBo http://digbig.com/4xybw bastions and sanctuaries, though, and there is suddenly much agitation. Blue blood has been spilled, after all. Enough is enough. SoBo elite's hubris is at stake, ladies and gentlemen, and must be avenged at all cost. http://digbig.com/4xyck. The unspoken ground rules of special privilege must be imposed.

Spymaster.

You never know when and where your past may catch up with you. This morning, The Times of India informed me that (a) secret service folks from Australia, USA, UK and Israel were in Mumbai visiting the places attacked by the terrorists last week; and (b) Nariman House was a target because it was supposed to be a front for Israeli intelligence. In other words, Mossad. The reason it made me think of the past was that, when I was writing my Master of Commerce thesis http://digbig.com/4xxxk and living at 233 Khetwadi Main Road http://digbig.com/4xxxp I was also trying to make a bit of money on the side. For instance, I had done quite a lot of translation into English of dubious literature written in absolutely pathetic Hindi and dealing with sex education. The client was on Hornby Road near Handloom House. I cannot recall who put me in touch with him. Similarly, I had done some work for a publisher of study guides. Somebody had also asked me to try my luck at a travel agency opposite the New Empire Cinema. I think one of the employees there guided me to Kailas on Peddar Road (now Deshmukh Marg). This was in the days when India and Israel were not on too friendly terms. If memory serves, the Consulate and Trade Representative's office had opened in Mumbai in 1953 and was the only consular presence of that country in India. By the way, Israel was born just a year after India got independence, if you recall. Coming back to my story, I was allowed to go up to the office on the fourth or fifth floor after being thoroughly frisked at the entrance on the ground floor. That itself was an unusual experience in those days. I did not get the job although they interviewed me and made me fill up a lengthy application form. So, maybe, I was saved from a fate worse than death of serving Mossad. I'm being facetious, of course. Well, the other recent occasion when my past suddenly caught up with me was when I was reading Bernie Lee's Murder at Musket Beach. The chief protagonist called Tony, a mystery writer and a member of the Tony and Pat Pratt husband-and-wife team, also happens to be a copywriter who flies from Portland, Oregon, for a couple of days of creative work in Hollywood. The description of the meeting with the client and the creative and account service team as well as of the recording session brought back my past in advertising especially when I was in Clarion-McCann. ttp://digbig.com/4xxxn.

On camera.

What's the difference between a movie about terrorists running for about 120 minutes and live tv coverage of an on-going anti-terrorist operation in real time? In the former, you know the script in advance. If you're the star (Bruce Willis?), you know you're not going to die, even if you get a few scratches on the face and a slash on your forearm for effect. You can casually slip into your bullet-proof jacket, adjust the helmet with elan, step out of the vehicle jauntily and walk into danger. Nothing will happen to you, dude, because it is not in the script. We saw with our own eyes, though, the perils of acting like a hero (maybe because you're on camera?) when you should be acting like the shrewd chief of the ATS you're supposed to be. Never underestimate your adversary's fire power and tactical skills. Never overestimate your luck. Bravura is fine in ballet, not in a real-life anti-terrorist op. Brawn isn't the answer. Brains are. In fact, if you head the ATS, stay in the war room planning and directing. Don't stray into the field chasing terrorists in a Qualis. Unless you imagine you're starring in Death Wish. http://digbig.com/4xxke. Do we need martyrs at any cost?

Milky ways.

In my childhood at 233 Khetwadi Main Road http://tinyurl.com/48tnw4, there used to be a milk seller across the street who styled himself as a "dairy". His delivery man or "bhaiyya" as he was addressed in those days climbed up to our third floor terrace flat twice a day carrying on his head a brass vessel with a lid. As soon as the door was opened by my mother or the family retainer, he would plonk down his burden and ladle out the specified quantity of milk using ¼-, ½- or 1-seer brass measures with U-shaped handles. Most afternoons, this would be done under my watchful eye with a bit of accompanying banter addressed mostly to me. The bhaiyya used to call me "baba" and talk in a Bambaiya patois mixing a bit of Hindi and Marathi. I'm talking of the days before I started to go to full-time school, mind you. I had no idea which part of India he hailed from and even if I had known it, I don't think it would have made a whit of a difference to our daily encounter, a pleasant part of my life then. The hisaab (calculation) of the total dues, recorded diligently in a little notebook by my mother, was tallied on the first of every month and promptly paid in cash. There is one rather gruesome image of the dairy that still haunts me. In the pre-Independence riots of 1947, I watched aghast from our terrace window one afternoon the driver of a hack victoria http://digbig.com/4xxcq coming from the 13th lane being stabbed. His body tumbled from the driver's perch on to the gate of the dairy. Later, after the police came and had the body removed, the hired help in the dairy was busy for a long time scrubbing away the blood stains. As time passed, the mode of milk supply to 233 Khetwadi Main Road changed. After Aarey Diary's arrival on the Mumbai scene in the early 50s, milk-selling booths mushroomed all over the city. The nearest one was bang opposite our dairy. A queue of squabbling milk buyers would form there twice a day early morning and just after noon, jostling one another, jockeying for a better place and creating quite a racket as is the wont of us Indians. Our dairy like many of its brethern could not withstand the Aarey onslaught for long . Soon, the family retainer had to stand in the queue at least once a day with the aluminum milk token in hand. The milk used to be supplied in glass bottles with quality differnces (whole, double toned, toned, etc.) indicated by the colour code of the foil crown. Much later, the bottles got replaced by plastic pouches. The milk cooker with a whistling siren entered my life sometime around then. http://digbig.com/4xxcp. As the milk supply improved, the milk token became redundant. You could just walk to any milk booth and walk away with as much milk as you wanted. You could even stand there and sip flavoured milk or lassi with a straw if you so desired. A couple of years back, when Amul, Nestlé and others started selling no-need-to-boil milk in Tetra Pak cartons, I switched to it with alacrity. The bhaiyya is now only a distant memory. So is the milk cooker.

Slice of lime.

Quite likely I'm totally off the mark here. But I'm beginning to seriously doubt the indiscriminate inclusion of celebrity in ads in the cinema hall and on tv. I suspect it takes away some of the credibility of the message intended to be delivered, especially when the approach is slice-of-life. Take the well-made ad currently being aired for Tata Sky+. Aamir Khan is trying to put his wife (played not by his real-life wife but a dimply Gul Panag)
into a good frame of mind. He has made the morning tea, cooked breakfast just the way she likes, cleaned up the fridge and so forth just so she will allow him to watch cricket match slated for the evening even if it clashes with her favourite soap. Obviously they have just one tv set. I don't believe it. To me, they look like a two- or multiple-tv family, who would also have at least a live-in maid. Ergo, the bone of contention should simply not exist. Only if the viewer is a born cretin or has just arrived from Mars to believe the couple depicted is a typical middle class, upwardly mobile couple, then it will work. A modest apartment as the setting and a non-celebrity cast would've helped belief. http://digbig.com/4xwra.
I guess our tv watcher today is too astute and savvy. She can tell when Aamir Khan is not Aamir Khan. The trouble with the Indian star system is that, in every movie, we tend to think of the star as herself/himself. If we are telling the story to a friend, we refer to the characters by the name of the star. Remember how in most of his hits of his heydays Amitabh Bachchan used to be named Vijay? On the other hand, there is a currently running tv ad featuring Saif Ali Khan, Shah Rukh Khan and Kareena Kapoor which lets them be celebs and uses a real-life relationship intelligently and believably.

Whose truth?

Of late, I have been writing on my blog about stuff to which I had not been giving much thought for a long, long time. Take, for instance, my two Mahabharata-related posts: Best of Enemies. http://digbig.com/4xsbk and Maya. http://digbig.com/4xsbn. Or, the one about Lord Vishnu's ten incarnations: Ten. Far better than Tolekien. http://digbig.com/4xsbp. All of them deal with Indian mythology and, indirectly, religion. I was familiar as a child with what I have written about here. I never paid it much heed as an adult, though. Soon after writing these posts, I switched to writing about Gandhi who used to be preoccupied with these things all his life. My last post, MK Gandhi aka 'Mahatma'. http://digbig.com/4xsbq, ends with a quote from Nathuram Godse whose disagreement with Gandhi hinged on the interpretation of Bhagvadgita. Both thought they had an exclusive access to Truth. Both had worked to eradicate untouchability, incidentally. Godse confessed that he considered the writings of Savarkar and Gandhi most relevant for India. According to him, the teachings in Bhagwadgita literally related to the happenings on the battlefield of Kurukshsetra. For Gandhi, it could well have been about a spiritual struggle, the heart's search for a saviour, more in the vein of the Sermon on the Mount.

J Lo, K Jo, SoHo, Soho, SoBo and other wonders.

They have a J Lo. So we must have a K Jo, bro. They have an acronymous SoHo in Manhattan and Soho (“Soho! There goes the fox!”) at the centre of the West End in London. So we must have a SoBo, not a SoMu in Mumbai that used to be Bombay. When ad agencies started to migrate from SoBo en masse to Lower Parel in the 90s and later, an ad guy had the unconscionable gall to suggest that it be elvated in nomenclature at least to Upper Worli. You know what I mean? Sheer audacity, brazen boldness wedded to impudent assurance and insolence. Total temerity. Cheek, nerve, effrontry. In short, shameless, insolent disregard for propriety or courtesy. It all springs in these instances from a "born (again?) in the USA" mindset. The snobbery of this world view (i.e., the framework of ideas and beliefs we use to interpret and interact with the world or, in other words, everyday reality) makes me want to puke. I remember reading somewhere what Martin Heidegger, the German philosopher who was also a Nazi, had to say on the subject. Although we live in a common (= shared) world, went his argument, the world surrounding us is differernt for each of us. We are thrown into the world, willy-nilly, and must come to terms with it as its inhabitants. So, I guess some of us need snobbery to deal with our dreary lives. Snobbery can have its uses, no doubt. At one point in my life, I used it to teach myself to appreciate Western Classical music. While reading Nick Hazelwood's Savage: The Life and Times of Jemmy Button http://digbig.com/4xwha, I was astonished at the snobbish behaviour of the eponymous Fuegian from the southermost tip of South America, the most hostile of habitats in the 16th Century. After his contact with the British and stay in Britain, he turned into the ultimate fop http://digbig.com/4xwgt, fastidious in his top hat and gloves and spotless waistcoat, preening in front of every mirror. This is the single most common identity disorder among most wannabes, I reckon. (P.S.: By the way, now Lower Parel has at least a High Street, thanks to Phoenix.)

Bad memories.

With all the "oust the outsiders" poison currently vitiating the atmosphere in Mumbai, I'm reminded of two sorry events from my childhood at 233 Khetwadi Main Road. http://tinyurl.com/48tnw4. The first one took place toward the end of World War II. There was strict rationing in force. The rationing administrative office nearest to our house was at Muzzffarabad Hall (aka The People's Jinnah Hall), on the Grant Road Bridge close to Novelty Cinema http://digbig.com/4xwdb, within easy strolling distance from our house. My sister http://digbig.com/4xwdc used to work there. She had learned Urdu in her spare time before taking up the job. She was an ardent movie goer and used to buy and listen to all the latest 78 rpm discs of the hit songs from the movies. With hindsight, it seems likely that she was deeply affected by the passionate love stories she witnessed on the silver screen in the companionable twilight of the movie hall. Those were probably the days when Ratan starring Swarna Lata and featuring the hit song Ankhiyan Milake had just been released. On Saturdays, my sister's office used to close an hour and a half after noon and she would be home by 2 pm. One fateful Saturday afternoon, she did not turn up at her usual arrival time. My mother was frantic with worry. As soon as my father returned home, they had a whispered confab. Phone calls were made and enquiries too all over the city with our relatives and her friends. That night, I was woken up by the weeping of my father and mother. It scared and saddened me no end. I don't recall being particularly saddened by my sister's disappearance, though. This was because, except for surface cordiality, she was not at all fond of me. She must have viewed the late arrival of a male heir on the family scene http://digbig.com/4xwdf when she was already 18 as a threat to her prospects of inheritance. I was in awe of her, even a bit afraid too. Eventually, my sister was traced to my aunt's house in Nowroji Street. She had made this defiant move to declare her intention of marrying a Muslim colleague. I am not aware of what transpired when my parents went to fetch her. In a couple of days, she returned home and resigned her job. Broad-minded as my parents were, the shock of their daughter wanting to marry a Muslim must have been way too much for them to bear. The other sad event occured some time later, maybe in the early fifties. It concerned a cousin of mine from Khar who married a Hindu girl not of our caste. My uncle and, more particularly, my aunt http://digbig.com/4xwdg made it a point to ostracize him from the clan. Although, in their heart of hearts, my parents who were rather fond of the boy, did not want to do it, they had to follow suit. I do not think I was much bothered by all the fuss that was being made. I had never been much concerned with caste and creed right from the beginning. It perturbed me to hear much later that one of my professors in Sydenham College who was also a favourite Marathi author of mine disowned his daughter for marrying a Muslim and went to the extent of taking in her name a purificatory bath that an orthodox Hindu takes after returning home from the crematorium or the burning grounds. In short, he declared to the world that, in his eyes, she was dead and gone. Later on, though, I discovered that malicious rumour mongering had inspired this vicious canard. That, at least, is a good memory to treasure.

Sweaty, smelly new theory. (It won't win me a Nobel.)

I said it once. http://digbig.com/4xsqe. I will say it again. "I have a nose for body odours – other people's, that is. A mere whiff can set me off. They're the bane of my existence, the chief reason why I shudder to board local trains, admittedly a faster mode of getting from point A to point B in Mumbai." And, the more I try to dodge the onslaught of other people's b.o., the closer I'm getting to formulating a new theory that's sure not to win me a Nobel. Based on my keen observation at close quarters of at least two young and desirable women in two totally far-apart georgraphical locations and social milieu, I am tempted to jump to a rather hasty though astonishing conclusion. It would appear that an unpleasant b.o. from a talented male may actually act as a magnet for an adoring female. The Smell Report (page 12) http://digbig.com/4xsqg tells us: "On standard tests of smelling ability - including odour detection, discrimination and identification - women consistently score significantly higher than men. One researcher has claimed that the superior olfactory ability of females is evident even in newborn babies." On page 14, there is a distiction made between the male pheromone androstenone and the male pheromone androstenol. The former is stale male-sweat smell (exposed to oxygen for 20 minutes) while the latter is fresh male-sweat smell. The former, avers the study, "is perceived as highly unpleasant by females (except during ovulation, when their responses change from 'negative' to 'neutral')." It seems that women on the pill do not have the same kind of reaction as ovulating women. Smell preferences are also linked with past associations. Be that as it may, I am beginning to wonder if there is another kind of "smell" factor at work here. This smell is "beyond" the band width of the b.o. Could it be the "sweet (sweat) smell of success/achievement"? Could it be a sort of personal "karmic" and/or rites-of-passge-related odour that has the power to nullify the offputting whiff of an offensive body odour or even a physical deficiency? (Remember the grotesquely deformed Quasimodo, the Hunchback of Notre Dame from Victor Hugo's eponymous novel as well as Esméralda, the kind gypsy girl who befriended him?) I know. I know. It could be one of my totally hair-brained theories worthy only of brickbats and scorn. Who knows?

Prarthana Samaj.

233 Khetwadi Main Road http://tinyurl.com/48tnw4 was within 5 minutes' walk from Prarthana Samaj. I had been told in my childhood that the "prarthana" (prayer) meetings of the Samaj (society/institution) used to be held in the Rammohan High School. It was situated at the eponymous landmark at the corner of Raja Rammohan Marg (then New Charni Road) and VP Road. However, I did not then know who Raja Rammohan Roy, the "father" of Brahmo Samaj (Society of the Worshipers of the Absolute), was. History has portrayed him as the initiator of Hinduism's renaissance in Bengal. This is bolstered by the Daniele Hervieu-Leger's view of religion http://digbig.com/4xqjm as "a social and ideological mechanism for creating and sustaining both an individual and a communal sense of belonging ... [in brief] the mobilization of collective memory.". The weekly discourse-and-prayer meeting of the Brahmos was modelled on the Unitarian Church's sermon-and-prayer meeting. Roy and his close associates, Tarachand Chakravarti and Chandrasekhar Deb, were familiar with the Unitarian practices. Roy's monotheism had a rational as well a moral foundation from his retrieval of the Upnishadas, Brahma Sutras and other ancient Hindu texts (what he referred to as "Vedanta" = end or culmination of all knowledge as a body of work collectively). Roy's Brahmo Samaj was a living monument to his “religious innovativeness”. This spirit spurred him "to reinvent the chain" to fill up the new spaces of belief left bereft by "the decomposition of tradition". ("Traditions are forgotten, but they are also reenvisioned," explains Brian A. Hatcher in Remembering Rammohan: An Essay on the [Re-]emergence of Hinduism.) In our own times, television, the Internet, the cellphone and other modern tools are being used to help this process.

Talk to me in Web 2.0.

I am, you could almost say, a man of (few?) words. On my word of honour, boys and girls. Words are my preoccupation. Or, shall we say my occupational accomplices? Playing with words comes to me fairly easily. I revel in it. I am word-friendly. I wish I were Lord of the Words. But I find myself at a loss for words far too often to harbour any such delusions of grandeur. http://digbig.com/4xsfr. My love affair with words is probably why I so highly value Aldous Huxley, Dorothy Parker, Groucho Marx, Woody Allen, Leonard Cohen and even Seinfeld http://digbig.com/4xsfw & http://digbig.com/4xsfx. My antennae, though, are always out for the meaning of words, even subtle nuanaces. The context and the subtext of word usage http://digbig.com/4xsft intrigue and often amuse me. For me, "There's a blaze of light/In every word," as Leonard Cohen puts it so eloquently in his Hallelujah. http://digbig.com/4xsfn. Take, for instance, the way Gmail insists on calling every exchange of email between two people, maybe a bit coyly and self-consciously, "conversation". That's Web 2.0 talk, dude. Keeping in touch. That's what Web 2.0 and social networking are all about, after all. At least, that's the mantra of the Web 2.0 gurus. Having been in advrtising long enough, though, I am painfully aware that many of the so-called breakthroughs in theoretical thinking are only a new use of old words. Or, the same old words in a new context. http://digbig.com/4xsfs.

MK Gandhi aka 'Mahatma'.

Robert Payne's anecdotal The Life and Death of Mahatma Gandhi is quite an insightful biography. According to his reckoning (ibid, page 290), while Rabindranth Tagore, the Nobel laureate, was already 'Gurudev' (Celestial Teacher) and Gandhi's South African associate, Charlie Freer Andrews, 'Deenabandhu' (Brother to the Poor) in 1915, Tagore was still to bestow the 'Mahatma' title on Gandhi.

Another source, however, attributes the authorship of the Mahatma epithet to Nautamlal Bhagavanji Mehta, an Indian freedom fighter and Gandhi's supporter, and the date and the place of the conferring it as 21 January 1915 and Kamribai School in Jetpur, Saurashtra (Gujarat) respectively. http://digbig.com/4xsbg.

In the 20 January 1927 issue of Young India, though, Gandhi wrote: "I myself do not feel like a saint in any shape or form." Was that a rejection of the Mahatma title earlier conferred on him? Or, self-doubt?

Payne offers this anecdote about an incident that must have occured during Gandhi's last sojourn in Delhi (ibid, page 550):

Once he was asked: "If you are a Mahatma (Great Soul), perform a miracle and save India." He answered sadly: "I am not a Mahatma. I am an ordinary person like everyone else, except that I am much frailer."

By the way, General Jan Smuts who had had first-hand experience of Gandhi in South Africa reportedly told his contemporary and friend, Winston Churchill, that Gandhi "... is a man of God. You and I are mundane people." http://digbig.com/4xsbc.

Payne cites Gandhi telling Manubehn on 22 January 1948, i.e., eight days before he was assasinated (ibid, page 573) inter alia: "I am a true mahatma."

He again quotes him telling her on the night before the assasination (ibid, page 579): "If I were to die of a lingering disease, or even from a pimple, then you must shout from the housetops to the whole world that I was a false mahatma. ... And if an explosion takes place, as it did last week, or of someone shot at me and I received his bullet in my bare chest without a sigh and with Rama's name on my lips, only then should you say that I was a true mahatma."

This pronouncement was at 10:00 pm on 29 January 1948. At about 5:10 pm the next day, he got his wish.

Parting shot: "My respect for the Mahatma was deep and deathless. ... and therefore on January 30, I bowed to him first, then at point blank range fired three successive shots and killed him. " (Nathuram Godse's statement in the court of Mr Justice Atma Charan, Red Fort, ibid, page 639)

Related posts: The Mind of MK Gandhi http://digbig.com/4xrdn. The more, the less sexier. http://digbig.com/4xrdp. Celebrity revisited. http://digbig.com/4xsbf.

Operation Clean-up.

At 233 Khetwadi Main Road http://tinyurl.com/48tnw4 when I was a child, the bathroom to the back of the house on the west side used to be reserved only for washing the cooking utensils. That time, coal was used for cooking and heating the bath water. http://digbig.com/4xrss. The coal ash was collected and stored. It was then used for scrubbing the cooking utensils. As my mother used to use grated coconut as well as coconut milk in the many delectable dishes she cooked, at least one coconut was cracked open every day. The fibre off the shell was used as the scrubbing pad or sponge. On the window ledge of the wash room, there used to stand a brass pot filled with ash and topped with a bit of the scrubbing fibre. I keep remembering me watching our family retainer scrubbing the pots and pans over his shoulder and sometimes offering to join him. I was never granted my wish. Little did I realise then that, some day in the far future, I would finally be granted my wish minus the coal ash cleaning powder and the coconut fibre scrubber. Instead, we would graduate up to Vim or Pril and plastic fibre scrub pads. In contrast, I have tumbled downhill from silver tongue cleaners to plastic or stainless steel ones over the same time span. http://digbig.com/4xrsy.

The end of the civilisation as we know it draws nigh.

A reporter once asked Gandhi http://digbig.com/4xrpt what he thought of the Western civilisation. It would be a good idea, he quipped. http://digbig.com/4xrmw. In December 1991, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics disintegrated. The West exulted over the triumph of Capitalism. Marx had said that the capitalist state would "wither away" eventually, "due to its own internal contradictions". What had come to pass instead was the exact opposite. The world also watched China turning to "brutal" state or authoritarian Capitalism around the turn of the century. This faithfully replicated the early development of Capitalism in Europe. There, except in the 17th-century Netherlands where democracy was confined to propertied liberals and did not include workers, all other nations were ruled by near-absolute monarchies with sufficient muscle to create ideal conditions for the emergence of Capitalism by forcible expropriation of the common people, turning them into the proletariat and then teaching them to accept their new lot. http://digbig.com/4xrnk & http://digbig.com/4xrpr. Come mid-September 2008, Marx's prophecy about the internal contradictions of Capitalism (remember last year's sub-prime debacle in the US, too?) seemed to have been fulfilled the world over. Ironically, the bailout of the American financial entities, caught in the derivatives' trap, by the US government resembled what a socialist state might have done. For a while now, alarm bells have been sounding about Barack Obama's Marxisant tendencies and radical past. http://digbig.com/4xrnr. Does it mean that, should he get elected come 4 November, he may proceed to deconstruct the Homeland of Capitalism and turn it into a post-modernist albeit Marxist dystopia? Will Marx and Engel have the last laugh? Do not watch this space for the answer.

Celebrity revisited.

Celebrity is sexy. Fame is sexy. Brawn is sexy. Brainy is sexier, though. When did you find out this secret, Mr Gandhi? Was it on 13 January 1897 as you stepped down at 5 p.m. on to the quay at Durban from the quarantined SS Courtland? To face, as it turned out, the mob waiting to nab the defender of the immigrants on board? "Let us teach the bloody coolie a lesson he won't forget in a hurry," they were shouting. Your arrival in their midst was greeted by a volley of abuse, bricks, stones, rotten tomatoes and eggs, yes? Your back to the railing literally, you escaped by the skin of your teeth, thanks to the brainy Mrs Alexander, the Police Superintendent's spouse, who showed great presence of mind and exceptional skill at wielding an open parasol while her honourable husband distracted the rioters by his passionate rendition of the then top o' the pops: "Hang ol' Ghandy on the sour apple tree". Mrs Alexander's resourceful husband once again saved the day and your life, didn't he, God bless his ever lovin' soul!, when you were besieged in the house of the excellent Mr Rustomjee later on in the evening? On 22 January, you sent a personal note of thanks and a gift in appreciation of the kindness shown by the couple, didn't you? Barely two days later, you magnanimously declined to prosecute your persecutors saying you wanted the matter to be dropped. Good ol' Ghandy ain't so bad, after all. Mahatmahood is sexy, eh, Mr Gandhi? (32, pages 50 - 51, The Last Gandhi Movie)

"I read a newspaper cutting sent by a correspondence to the effect that a temple has been erected where my image is being worshipped," wrote Gandhi. "This I consider to be a gross form of idolatry." Funny remark to come from a man who opened on 8 May 1913 a Hindu temple in Verulam, South Africa, and defended idols in an argument with Tagore much later in the presence of Andrews, an old associate from the South African days. Gandhi's argument was that the masses were not capable of absorbing abstractions. Tagore was opposed to the condescending attitude that grown-ups should be treated as children in the matter of mental age. Gandhi illustrated his point by citing the flag as an example, saying that it gave a concrete shape to a concept like nation and that great things had been achieved in Europe by so doing. Gandhi did prove his point by becoming a much worshipped idol in India. Why the protest then, Mr Gandhi, when it was too late to undo the harm? (42, page 68, The Last Gandhi Movie)

When did Gandhi become 'Mahatma'? Maybe, the first time he was so described was at a reception accorded to him in his native Kathiawar in January 1915. A month later, Tagore so addressed him in a letter. By the time Nehru met him for the first time in 1916, the halo was firmly in place. It took another five years, though, for him to exchange his Kathiawari cloak and turban for his trademark loincloth which he did in holy Varanasi. He had vowed in the last lap of his South African sojourn, to remain celibate for life in 1906 when he was thirty seven. At about the same time, his ideas about satyagraha (firmness for a good cause) were firming up while he was grappling with the South African crisis. It was also around this time that Gandhi decided that he must embrace voluntary poverty apart from celibacy. He wrote to his elder brother, Laxmidas, saying he was no more interested in worldly possessions. Mahatmahood was already creeping up on him stealthily. Later on, when he visited Europe and called on King George V, George Bernard Shaw, Charlie Chaplin and Romain Rolland, Gandhi impishly remarked: "You people wear plus-fours, mine are minus-fours." He was in his loincloth, it goes without saying. And, there was a twinkle in his eye and not an iota of malice in his heart. (38, pages 61 - 62, The Last Gandhi Movie)

Related posts: The Mind of MK Gandhi http://digbig.com/4xrdn.
The more, the less sexier. http://digbig.com/4xrdp.