Credit Card blues: Part Deux

The plot gets thicker. HSBC called me with all their over-enuthsiasm, offers me revolutionary packages (or atleast that's what they say) for next to nothing. "Sir, believe me, the process is easy, just two documents and you are done." So inevitably, Im sucked into their vortex.

I recieve a call today saying there's a courier waiting for me at home, from HSBC. I run from office to pick up. Finally, I get a credit card. Its here. The courier hands me the package and Im in utter disbelief. Its not a credit card. Its not even a rejection letter. Its a DVD of the movie Fashion.

I mean really guys, why give me grass when I really a want a horse.

Atleast hopefully, the next courier will be a credit card.

Loss and Longing in Pune

Everything reminds me of her. An empty seat at the coffee shop, the email with an idiosyncratic title that never came, the hand that was never held, the quirky vocab not heard, the warm embrace Im made to long for.....

I quote Wong Kar Wai, "The past was something he could see but not touch. And everything else was blurred......"

T20: Plebian Cricket

Tishani Doshi has finally said what all those hacks at cricinfo consider heresy. That Twenty20 is a good thing and it is inevitably more entertaining than Test cricket. Dont get me wrong, I love reading Gideon Haigh and Ramachandra Guha for their diligent chronicling of the game. But most intellecutalls see T20 as a dumbing down of the game. This is hardly the case. At 3.5 hrs T20 is still longer than the Football and Basketball matches. If tons of evaluation can be done on each of these games (inspite of their percieved short timeframe and low quality), then cricket can be far richer and complicated.

In many ways cricket (atleast in its early days) was a game for the anglophiles. This anglophile nature tells us Lords is the home of cricket, Neville Cardus was the greatest cricket writer, W.G.Grace was the greatest batsman (after Bradman).

I for one dont mind the democratisation/plebinisation of cricket. Its just difficult to skip office to watch Dravid gracefully "leave" a ball from Dale Steyn. While it is good to read about the metaphysical interpertations cricket, a few wham-bang sixes dont hurt.

McCullum by Pasternak

Tishani Doshi on her cricinfo blog has said that McCullum's IPL journey may just have been scripted by Chekhov. A glamorous team that excels only at losing has something tragicomic about.

Let me go a step further and add another Russian writer to that idea. McCullum's current script can also be scripted by Boris Pasternak (Doctor Zhivago). In many ways McCullum is the inherently decent guy caught in a crossfire. Like Zhivago he tries to do the right thing, but is often undone by forces beyond his control. It is a classic Russian tragedy. The protagonist, like McCullum, can try, try and try but will eventually only lose, through no fault of his own.

The ugly IPL trophy

Tishani Doshi has brilliantly interpreted the ugliness of the IPL trophy and the cultural reasons of its garishness. Indians often confuse beauty with opulence. We prefer life-less concrete and glass facades to aesthetic values. Our wedding ceremonies are simply gaudy displays of wealth and jewellery. Its almost like there is no place elegance and sensitivity in this ugly exhibition of wealth.

Review: Curfewed Night by Basharat Peer

There is something deeply Naipaulean about Basharat Peer's work. There is honesty, understanding and compassion. But unlike Naipaul, Peer combines his compassion with a sympathetic and personalized portrayal of his subject. Curfewed Night is a memoir and a personal history of Kashmir. The story of Kashmir is painted with love, care and most importantly a sense of balance.

As a young teenager he saw the explosion of militancy in the Valley. The teenage Basharat refuses to sing the Indian national anthem, fantasizes about dressing like militants, crossing the border for a training camp and fighting for Azadi. His parents send him to Aligarh to study, away from the violence. In Delhi he becomes reporter where his world is broader and feels a need to tell the the Kashmir story. For him, "India was grotesque and fascinating".

In his own words, "People from every conflict zone had told their stories: Palestinians, Israelis, Bosnians, Kurds,.......". Peer sets out to tell the story of his homeland. In Aligarh, "I heard echoes of Kashmir in the pages of Hemingway, Orwell, Dostoyevsky and Turgenev.....I wondered if one could write like that about Kashmir...". Mr.Peer I haven't read Turgenev but you have done something very important for India. You have told the truth and you did it with a Kashmiri voice.

The nation-state of India, so often bungling, over-bearing and petty, is portrayed as an oppressive and vindictive military power. The central government manipulates local elections, the army militarises every town and village, the free media refuses to give a Kashmiri perspective. In one word, India is the "hegemon".

The freedoms we take for granted are denied under a quasi-militaristic rule. Atrocities that would make us livid happen with ghastly frequency. A bride who is raped on her wedding day, a mother whose son is killed by the military, the militant tortured to near death, the innocent teenager caught in cross-fire, each of them symbolise a land in turmoil. Kashmir, where the snow has turned red. Where countless young men, both the Indian army and the militants, are reduced to statistics and names on grave stones.

In many ways the tale of Kashmir, is the story of how the idea of India is constrained by the Indian state. India has denied democracy and militarised Kashmir for the sake of its own nationalism. Pakistan has fuelled militancy and played chimerical games to deflect questions of its own legitemacy. But what of Kashmir, its people, their identity and their rights.

Peer's tale is not so much a call of freedom, as it is a wail for peace and normalcy.