The typical Indian software guy lives in his own mind. He mostly interacts with managers and clients abroad. Eats Pizzas and Italian food as a delicacy, wishes he could holiday in Hawai, follows the English Premier League religiously. He considers buying a flat in a gated community, negotiates the bank loan for a car and considers which SLR camera is the best. He generally curses the traffic but loves to jump signals.
He is the son of a government employee and takes pride that he earns more in his first job than his father does at the fag end of a long career. When a bomb goes off in Bangalore, he makes demented jokes like, "Wonder when it will go off in Pune" or "I just got bombed by my manager too, look at the amount of work I have". He lives in a bubble where the most important thing is your bug-fix.
After all he is Indian only for a sense of identity and religion. Withdraws as much as one can from the reality that is India. For him politicians of all types are venal and corrupt, democracy and governments are a sham. Until something happens to him, tragedies like bomb blasts and terrorism are parts of a packaged entertainment. Such things happen to others but never to himself.
His dreams have been doctored and India is alien to him.
Friday, December 12, 2008
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Home of the Blues
Just around the corner there's heartache........
Down the street that losers use...............
If you can wade in through the teardrops................
You'll find me at the Home of the Blues....................
Johnny Cash sums up my mood and that of the nation.
Down the street that losers use...............
If you can wade in through the teardrops................
You'll find me at the Home of the Blues....................
Johnny Cash sums up my mood and that of the nation.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
That jaded sinking feeling.....
Addressing a cabinet meeting in Delhi, the Home Minister called the Mumbai terror as an act of cowardice. But I just cannot bring myself to agree with him. What is so cowardly about firing in restaurants, hotels, railway stations and taking hostages in naked day light. It is one thing to leave a satchel in a dump with crude bombs, but these daring attacks call into question the very existence of the nation-state that is India. Is this just another phase in the long line of challenges
faced by the country or a defining moment where we confront the question that is now faced us. I hope it is the former, but the magnitude of this issue tells me its latter.
When did India turn into this strange shoot-out gallery. When was the last time the army had to be called into a city to save lives. Growing up in a small town like a Vijayawada, gangsters and crooked politicians existed only in movies and castiesm and communal riots were confined to books. I never had to confront the question of survival. Maybe India was always like this. Maybe viewing childhood through veils of nostalagia makes it more perfect than it was. But no, this cant be the India that I grew up in. It shouldnt be.
When the Marriot bombing took place in Islamabad, I told myself this would never happen in India. Even when bombs went off in Bangalore, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Delhi, Guwahati, I told myself it was a nameless, faceless enemy who couldnt confront India face to face. But can I take solace in such complacency now? Tommorow politicians will make speeches, the police will arrest a few "ISI-trained" youths, scholars will thrash out editorials on how to tackle security problems, TV channels will have a glee at the sorrow that can be marketed. Then it will all pass. We will overcome the next morning's fear with hope.
But right now, I cant help that jaded sinking feeling.............
faced by the country or a defining moment where we confront the question that is now faced us. I hope it is the former, but the magnitude of this issue tells me its latter.
When did India turn into this strange shoot-out gallery. When was the last time the army had to be called into a city to save lives. Growing up in a small town like a Vijayawada, gangsters and crooked politicians existed only in movies and castiesm and communal riots were confined to books. I never had to confront the question of survival. Maybe India was always like this. Maybe viewing childhood through veils of nostalagia makes it more perfect than it was. But no, this cant be the India that I grew up in. It shouldnt be.
When the Marriot bombing took place in Islamabad, I told myself this would never happen in India. Even when bombs went off in Bangalore, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Delhi, Guwahati, I told myself it was a nameless, faceless enemy who couldnt confront India face to face. But can I take solace in such complacency now? Tommorow politicians will make speeches, the police will arrest a few "ISI-trained" youths, scholars will thrash out editorials on how to tackle security problems, TV channels will have a glee at the sorrow that can be marketed. Then it will all pass. We will overcome the next morning's fear with hope.
But right now, I cant help that jaded sinking feeling.............
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Review: An Area of Darkeness by V.S.Naipaul
Few books have been as incriminating about India and Indians. From the moment of his arrival in Bombay, anything and everything seems to upset him. Sir Vidia's first travelogue in his ancestral land is an honest and no-holds-barred account of what he saw in India. He is utterly distressed by everything about India, from the babu-dom of Bombay to the orange robed sadhus of Benares, from the unethical businessman to the prostrating beggars.
Hindu philosophy preaches detachment from life and in turn leads to fatality. This fatality offers a certain disconnect from everyday life. Hence everyone fulfills only his duty. A businessman is expected to make money, even by dishonesty. A stenographer is expected to take notes, but not to type. In Trinidad Naipaul was aware of his caste but he is surprised by the Indian obsession with caste and purity. It is to the caste system, he attributes this sense of duty and withdrawal.
Indians, he argues, are a people without a sense of history or even reality. The tales are timeless and the ruins are everywhere. He sees India as a country, where political power has always been in the hands of a foreign military power. Reality is so complicated and harsh that, the nation became more archaic and withdrew from any responsibility of governing itself. He is surprised at the very Indian obliviousness to poverty and basic lack of hygiene in public spaces.
Naipaul's visits to India happen at curious times. His first visit coincided with the China war of 1962, his second with the Emergency of 1975 and his third during the late 1980s which came before an economic crisis. An Area of Darkness is a dark, brutal, yet honest account of India.
Hindu philosophy preaches detachment from life and in turn leads to fatality. This fatality offers a certain disconnect from everyday life. Hence everyone fulfills only his duty. A businessman is expected to make money, even by dishonesty. A stenographer is expected to take notes, but not to type. In Trinidad Naipaul was aware of his caste but he is surprised by the Indian obsession with caste and purity. It is to the caste system, he attributes this sense of duty and withdrawal.
Indians, he argues, are a people without a sense of history or even reality. The tales are timeless and the ruins are everywhere. He sees India as a country, where political power has always been in the hands of a foreign military power. Reality is so complicated and harsh that, the nation became more archaic and withdrew from any responsibility of governing itself. He is surprised at the very Indian obliviousness to poverty and basic lack of hygiene in public spaces.
Naipaul's visits to India happen at curious times. His first visit coincided with the China war of 1962, his second with the Emergency of 1975 and his third during the late 1980s which came before an economic crisis. An Area of Darkness is a dark, brutal, yet honest account of India.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Review: Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh
In Sea of Poppies dance becomes nautch, look becomes dekko and reliable is pukka. The setting is the British India of 1838. English mixes synchronously with Hindi, Bhojpuri and Bengali. Years ago, reading Gone with the Wind, I marveled at Margaret Mitchell's juggling of a southern accent and heavy Negro English. Here Ghosh does something even better. A colonial Englishman's indianised verbatim is juxtaposed with an American's English. The Frenchwoman's English is painfully strewn with Bengali words and it is the upper caste gomusta who speaks the language to perfection.
The trade of opium and the girmityari system are the explosive themes that move the novel. India is the producer, East India Company is the transporter and China is the consumer of this drug that defines the history of the nations. In this historical setting, a plethora of characters from an upper caste woman running away with a lower caste man, an American mulatto on the Ibis, a French biologist's daughter, a bankrupt Raja mingle and become jahaj-bhais.
Each charecter has its own life and the story is moving in so many different directions, but they end up reaching the same destination, the Ibis. On this ship, girmityars travel to the island of Mauritius. Ghosh takes delight in writing a book that is only half the story, the rest is the historical setting of the Indian subcontinent and China.
Whether it is the play with mulitple languages, the description of characters and their lives, the trade of opium, the impending war with China, or the complex societal setting the eighteenth century India, Ghosh excels on every front. Only the ending is abrupt and makes you wait for the next edition of the Ibis trilogy.
It is amazing how globalisation alters lives, Madhu Kalua becomes Maddow Colver. It is also probably how some of Sir Vidia's characters from A House For Mr Biswas acquired their names. Bishweshwar becomes Bissessar and Shyama becomes Shama.
The trade of opium and the girmityari system are the explosive themes that move the novel. India is the producer, East India Company is the transporter and China is the consumer of this drug that defines the history of the nations. In this historical setting, a plethora of characters from an upper caste woman running away with a lower caste man, an American mulatto on the Ibis, a French biologist's daughter, a bankrupt Raja mingle and become jahaj-bhais.
Each charecter has its own life and the story is moving in so many different directions, but they end up reaching the same destination, the Ibis. On this ship, girmityars travel to the island of Mauritius. Ghosh takes delight in writing a book that is only half the story, the rest is the historical setting of the Indian subcontinent and China.
Whether it is the play with mulitple languages, the description of characters and their lives, the trade of opium, the impending war with China, or the complex societal setting the eighteenth century India, Ghosh excels on every front. Only the ending is abrupt and makes you wait for the next edition of the Ibis trilogy.
It is amazing how globalisation alters lives, Madhu Kalua becomes Maddow Colver. It is also probably how some of Sir Vidia's characters from A House For Mr Biswas acquired their names. Bishweshwar becomes Bissessar and Shyama becomes Shama.
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
A Review for Mr Biswas
A House for Mr Biswas is a compassionate yet unsympathetic portrayal of the simple and unremarkable life of Mohun Biswas. Based mostly on his father's life in Trinidad during the 30s and 40s, Naipaul describes the life of a perennial loser. The story in itslef moves forward with a montonous undertone, no twists, no surprises, just a mundane life. But in this mundaneness lies a wealth of charecters and their relationships.
Biswas grows up without a home to call his own. He doesnt share love for his mother and even his marriage, in his own words, is a "cat in the bag affair". Shama, his wife, accepts him as her fate and displays no outward feeling of love. Biswas openly rebels against his mother-in-law, Mrs Tulsi and her brother Seth. He refuses to assimilate into the genteel din of the Tulsi household. Without a proper means of living he is forced to live on the generosity of the Tulsi family.
He considers himself trapped in a limiting society and openly blames the Tulsis for his situation. One sentence clearly captures his predicament, "He was married for life and only death would change his situation". But he reads alot and believes himself to be good with words. After a multitude of failed jobs, he lands up as a reporter for the Trinidad Sentinel, a local paper which relies more on fun facts than real news.
It is with his son, Anand that Biswas shares a real friendship. He takes pride and joy in Anand's success at school. Biswas's life long yearning is to own a house, for he fears loss of dignity even in death, among the squalor of the Tulsis. Even the World War II does not seem to change his position for the better or worse. It is only towards his end that he is able to buy house. This gives Mr Biswas all the joy, in spite of acquiring a huge debt.
Naipaul's comic portrayal of characters and cold assessment of life in a small Indian community in Trinidad offers wonderful insights. He portrays a people whose only source of identity is their caste which has little relevance in their present country or in their daily life. Biswas represents the beauty of the mundane and the aspirations of those who live in limiting societies.
Biswas grows up without a home to call his own. He doesnt share love for his mother and even his marriage, in his own words, is a "cat in the bag affair". Shama, his wife, accepts him as her fate and displays no outward feeling of love. Biswas openly rebels against his mother-in-law, Mrs Tulsi and her brother Seth. He refuses to assimilate into the genteel din of the Tulsi household. Without a proper means of living he is forced to live on the generosity of the Tulsi family.
He considers himself trapped in a limiting society and openly blames the Tulsis for his situation. One sentence clearly captures his predicament, "He was married for life and only death would change his situation". But he reads alot and believes himself to be good with words. After a multitude of failed jobs, he lands up as a reporter for the Trinidad Sentinel, a local paper which relies more on fun facts than real news.
It is with his son, Anand that Biswas shares a real friendship. He takes pride and joy in Anand's success at school. Biswas's life long yearning is to own a house, for he fears loss of dignity even in death, among the squalor of the Tulsis. Even the World War II does not seem to change his position for the better or worse. It is only towards his end that he is able to buy house. This gives Mr Biswas all the joy, in spite of acquiring a huge debt.
Naipaul's comic portrayal of characters and cold assessment of life in a small Indian community in Trinidad offers wonderful insights. He portrays a people whose only source of identity is their caste which has little relevance in their present country or in their daily life. Biswas represents the beauty of the mundane and the aspirations of those who live in limiting societies.
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