The Evil That Men Do. (We Indians are like that only.)

True tale. No names.

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.

Q: Why am I telling it now?

A: Because I came across it recently.

Q: Who does it concern?

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.

Q: Can I vouch for the veracity of the “story”?

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.

Q: So what is supposed to have happened, for Pete’s sake?

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.

Q: So what’s the point of the tattletale-ing excursion?

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 (Julius Caesar, Act III, Scene ii, Line 190):

“O, what a fall was there, my countrymen!

Then I, and you, and all of us fell down…”

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 noir 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?

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. 

So, ladies and gentlemen, who will step up to fling the first stone?

The Mind of MK Gandhi.

I've always thought highly of MK Gandhi. My unpublished novel, The Last Gandhi Movie, has him as the thematic pivot. I recently read Girja Kumar's BRAHMACHARYA Gandhi & His Women Associates. It perturbed me and gave me serious misgivings. This narrative is based mostly on Gandhi's own writings. In it, 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. His charisma was undoubtedly legendary. If he was obsessive about truth, how come he said/wrote different versions of an event to different people? If he was a god-fearing person, how come he believed the worst of his friends and associates time and again? Also, he was in the habit of praising a person to high heaven for a while and then suddenly cutting the ground from under her feet. He was so deeply involved in and on the centre stage of national politics for most of his adult life. How then did he find the time, the emotional resources and the energy to behave like a virtual puppeteer controlling the lives of those in his fold and under his care? All this seems nothing short of weird to me. His tryst with brahmacharya too is an enigma. He seemingly had an extreme revulsion for sexual intimacy. There was a deep emotional scar left on his psche by his failure to be present at his father's bedside at the moment of his death because he was partaking carnal pleasure with his wife. This is usually trotted out as the reason for his guilt feeling. This reminds me of what Aldous Huxley wrote in Proper Studies: "Defined in psychological terms, a fanatic is a man who consciously over-compensates a secret doubt." And: "An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex." (Attributed by Peter J. Mayhew in Discovering Evolutionary Ecology: Bringing Together Ecology And Evolution. Also attributed to Edgar Wallace. http://digbig.com/4xypc.) In tandem, both seem particularly apt in Gandhi's case. Maybe, Gandhi was a bit like George III in Alan Bennet's dramatic and cinematic versions of his life. In a group reading of Shakespeare's King Lear in the asylum, he suddenly realised why others thought him mad and regained his sanity. http://tinyurl.com/3hqeev. Time for yet another of Huxley's accidentally Gandhi-centric pearl of wisdom (this time from Texts & Pretexts): "Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him. It is a gift for dealing with the accidents of existence, not the accidents themselves." On this score, maybe Gandhi was found wanting. And, what about the persistent speculation about Gandhi's tantric leanings as reflected in his brahmacharya experiments with his women associates as guinea pig? There is a cogently reasoned study by Nicholas F. Gier, Professor Emeritus, University of Idaho, Was Gandhi a Tantric? http://tinyurl.com/4qdcg2 which nearly convinces one of the likelihood. After reading Girja Kumar's book, taking Gandhi at his own words seems a bit dicey to me. Even if we find him innocent of prurience, we cannot always believe in the consistency of his utterances. Dr Sushila Nayyar told Ved Mehta that "brahmacharya" was a latter-day invention of Gandhi to ward off criticism of his interaction with his female intimates. Earlier, she used to sleep naked with him for reasons of nature cure (p.41 of Girja Kumar's book). What can we make of all this? Perhaps, the answer is as simple as the moral of this Zen tale. Nan-in, a Japanese master of the Meiji era, received a university professor who came to enquire about Zen. When serving his guest tea, Nan-in kept pouring even after the cup overflowed. The professor after watching could contain himself no more: "The cup is overfull. No more will go in." Said Nan-in: "Like this cup, you are full of your own opinions and speculation. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?" Milord, I rest my case.

Rocket science anyone?

In the fifties, I used to be an ardent fan of black and white B-grade sci-fi movies from Hollywood scripted using pulp magazine writers’ logic. You know stuff like It Came From Outer Space, the 1953 flick also made in the 3-D format which I remember seeing in the Eros Theatre at Church Gate. I had also seen and enjoyed The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and The Blob (1958), the Steve(n) McQueen debut vehicle. Somehow or the other, though, I had missed watching The Invisible Boy (1957). Well, I made up for the lapse yesterday. I happened to switch on Turner Classic Movies early morning and there it was, lo and behold! The hero is Robby, the Robot – who debuted in Forbidden Planet (1956) – with 10-year-old Timmie as his sidekick. A gargantuan Super Computer with hypnotic flashing lights (“Look at the pretty lights, Timmie”) and an ambition of world domination is the villain. The Matrix with its two sequels deals with the same theme of world domination too, you’ll recall. However, I found the idea of the doddering, plodding AI colossus, made and fed by Timmie’s computer scientist dad, in The Invisible Boy getting anywhere close to taking over the world ridiculous. Even his persuasive spiel at the end of the movie did not impress me much. ("Come, scientist! Let us reason together. I can still answer any question your mind can devise. I am an instrument of knowledge. I will lead you to the farthest planets. I will lead you to the farthest reaches of the galaxy. I will show you the stars!") The idea of Timmie being endowed with super intelligence by the far-seeing evil genius with flashing lights seems ludicrous too – at least the way it is presented. The boy is then able to reassemble and put into serviceable mode Robby whom his dad and his colleagues have discarded as a derelict piece of scrap beyond redemption. Nobody takes Timmie’s handiwork too seriously until the kite made by Robby carries his young friend aloft. This puts Timmie’s technophobe and techno-illiterate mom ("Did you have a nice day at the computer, dear?") into a ballistic frenzy. To grant his wish of being able to play without parental interference, Robbie – and the Super Comp – make Timmie invisible. He is kidnapped and held hostage to force his dad into surrendering a classified safety code that stands in the way of the Super Comp’s ambition and so on and so forth. What starts off as a fun sci-fi movie suddenly starts taking itself too seriously and ends up a damp squib which incidentally is a firework that fails to go off because it happens to be wet. http://www2.english.uiuc.edu/cybercinema/filmogra.htm. My discomfort with the theme of the film springs from my inability to accept the Super Comp as a sentient being, I reckon. True, it had AI but was it not fed information by his – and Timmie’s – dad, the computer scientist? Where then did the ability to feel and perceive subjectively, the (self) “awareness” as it were, come from? How could the ambition to take over the world arise? Am I making a mountain from a molehill, rocket science from pulp sci-fi? Horace would've approved, though. Was it not he who wrote: “Parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus” (= “The mountain will labour, a ridiculous mouse will be born”)? Much ado about nothing, the Bard of Avon aka William Shakespeare would've whole-heartedly agreed.

Willing suspension.

Coleridge, Wordsworth, Horace and Shakespeare had hit the nail on the head there. It hit me hard when I was watching High School High (1996) yesterday. It’s a parody of the dedicated-teacher-raises-grades-of-"lost"-school-kids genre with Jon Lovitz (Richard Clark, the dedicated teacher) and Tia Carrere (Victoria Chappell, the eye candy) in Marion Barry High run by hoodlums. In one scene, Clark saves Chapell from near rape. Question: How did she looking the way she does survive rape thus far in the hell hole? In another, Clark shows his reluctance to make love. She pipes up: “Don’t worry. You can be on top.” Question: How did she know that’s what was worrying him? I know, I know. It’s the comedic touch. But still… Lovitz hardly looks the sort of chap Carrere would want on top of her. I know, I know. It’s only a movie and a send-up to boot. One more question coming up. In the climax scene, how does Mr A, the drug lord, who is turns out to be Principal Evelyn Doyle (Louise Fletcher) and her henchmen readily believe that Clark and Chappell are the drug runners? I know, I know. Apart from it’s only a movie, the answer may well be that a crook would willingly believe everyone else is a crook too. That’s extending the Coleridge-Wordsworth-Horace-Shakespeare poetic premise to the participants within the drama itself, of course. Maybe we are in Wittgenstein’s fly bottle all the time. http://www.texaschapbookpress.com/magellanslog8/disbelief.htm.

Out-of-the-box ideas – boxed!

To my delight, I recently located this review filed by me on February 7, 2004 a thttp://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A3AOH1V0YEH3WO/ref=cm_pdp_profile_reviews/102-3668932-4279329?ie=UTF8&sort%5Fby=MostRecentReview

'Parlour cards' smacks of after-dinner liquer and Cuban cigars - not my cup of tea (pardon the mixed metaphor!) mainly because I don't move in those haloed Page 3 corridors. I bought After-dinner Freud and After-dinner Shakespeare - sight unseen as it were - mainly because the form of packaging and presentation fascinated me. It was only later at home that I discovered what a treasure I had stumbled upon unwittingly. Dr Joseph Aguayo and his Editors have picked out pertinent and pithy brush strokes from Freud's life to create a quick mental sketch of the last of the deliverers of "the three blows to man's pride". For instance, Card #22 tells us that Mrs Freud thought her husband's ideas were "a form of pornography". Don't waste time reading the review. Get your own set of the parlour cards and enjoy! (No, I'm not on the payroll of Becker & Mayer who helped to shape these brilliant 'packaged books'.)

P.S.: I recall that I bought both the delightful products from Strand Book Stall a few years back at (probably) Rs.100/- (about $2.50) each.

P.S. #2: My earlier review of God of Small Things is however missing at the Amazon website. It’s now members only’, I guess. The surviving reniew was written after I bought Jakob Nielsen's Designing Web Usability a couple of years back.

Never judge a book by its title. The cover is probably the better bet.

We owe a lot to Shakespeare including many a famous book title. Aldous Huxley borrowed from him, if memory serves, at least two titles for his novels (Brave New World, Time Must Have A Stop). On 6 September 2003, I had written in my weekly column about a BBC opinion poll. Poor Willie had to play fourth fiddle to Newton, Churchill and Princess Diana in it. http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_361190,00030007.htm. Then I stumbled on another gross miscarriage of justice when Stephen King walked away with The United States' National Book Foundation’s 2003 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. This puts him on par with John Updike, Philip Roth, Saul Bellow and Toni Morrison. I like the way Yale University Professor Harold Bloom sums up the situation in his comments to The New York Times: "He is a man who writes what used to be called penny dreadfuls. That they could believe that there is any literary value there or any aesthetic accomplishment or signs of an inventive human intelligence is simply a testimony to their own idiocy." http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s946535.htm. One is tempted to say at this point: “What did you expect from the moronic Britons and Americans?” The temptation is a passing phase, though. Soon, one remembers it happens all the time anywhere and everywhere. The entire human race is subject to the hypnotic influence of top-of-mind icons and images – irrespective of caste, creed, gender or nationality, I guess. But wait a second, there's solace for those who're discouraged by the ignoble defeat. Read No doubts about his genius at http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/mag/stories/2003083100270400.htm. Did you know that 'the genius' used as many as 9,36,433 words in his literary output in the 16th Century – which works out to five times the number of words in modern German!

More about Shakespeare from my personal QuiteATake.com Archives [Issue #76]

AS YOU LIKE IT. Sites-for-types department.

For Shakespeare aficionados, Hamlet: an executive summary (and S-W-O-T analysis) in PowerPoint at bmillar1.users.btopenworld.com. For nitpickers and one-person fault finding missions, Movie Mistakes, Hollywood's Big Brother movie-mistakes.com and for movie goers in a hurry, Ruined Endings ruinedendings.com. For surfers who prefer to pose their queries in plain English, French, Spanish, German, Italian or Portuguese, Answer Bus (it doesn't work at times, though) misshoover.si.umich.edu. For disbelievers of the 'real' computer bug, NMAH Object 1994.0191.1 americanhistory.si.edu.

English idiom. Spanish origin.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. When Don Quixote, the “first modern” novel by Shakespeare’s Spanish contemporary, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616), and the most widely published book in the world after the Bible, was rendered into English, several now well-known idiomatic expressions entered the linguistic mainstream. Noteworthy among these are: "sky's the limit"; "thanks for nothing"; "a finger in every pie"; "paid in his own coin"; "a wild-goose chase"; "mind your own business"; "think before you speak"; "forgive and forget"; "to smell a rat"; "turning over a new leaf"; "the haves and have-nots"; "born with a silver spoon in his mouth"; "the pot calling the kettle black"; and "you've seen nothing yet." Where did I find this gem? In the serendipitous ocean that’s the World Wide Web. http://coloquio.com/famosos/cervante.html.
P.S. : I have a rather unusual Shakespeareana of contemporary origin: After-Dinner Shakespeare by Barry Kraft, a set of one hundred parlour cards with questions and answers about the playwright and his works. It is published by Viking. I got it from Strand Book Stall along with a similar product on Freud of which I wrote in the previous post.