Am reading the very disturbing "Listening to Grasshoppers" by Arundhati Roy. Wanted to do some kind of review of it, but gave up and am settling for extensively quoting from perhaps the most devastating piece , "And His Life Should Become Extinct". It is about the terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001 and the subsequent trial of one of the accused Mohammed Afzal, who is currently in jail having been awarded a death sentence that has not yet been carried out.
The original can (and should be) read here:
http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?232979
http://www.countercurrents.org/hr-roy311006.htm
The Outlook article has some comments that refute some bits of Roy's research and are useful to read.
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On December 13, 2001, the Indian Parliament was in its winter session. (The NDA government was under attack for yet another corruption scandal.) At 11.30 in the morning, five armed men in a white Ambassador car fitted out with an Improvised Explosive Device drove through the gates of Parliament House. When they were challenged, they jumped out of the car and opened fire. In the gun battle that followed, all the attackers were killed. Eight security personnel and a gardener were killed too. The dead terrorists, the police said, had enough explosives to blow up the Parliament building, and enough ammunition to take on a whole battalion of soldiers
A day later, on December 15, it announced that it had "cracked the case": the attack, the police said, was a joint operation carried out by two Pakistan-based terrorist groups, Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed. Twelve people were named as being part of the conspiracy. Ghazi Baba of the Jaish (Usual Suspect I), Maulana Masood Azhar also of the Jaish (Usual Suspect II); Tariq Ahmed (a "Pakistani"); five deceased "Pakistani terrorists" (we still don't know who they are). And three Kashmiri men, S.A.R. Geelani, Shaukat Hussain Guru, and Mohammed Afzal; and Shaukat's wife Afsan Guru. These were the only four to be arrested.
In the tense days that followed, Parliament was adjourned. On December 21, India recalled its high commissioner from Pakistan, suspended air, rail and bus communications and banned over-flights. It put into motion a massive mobilisation of its war machinery, and moved more than half-a-million troops to the Pakistan border. Foreign embassies evacuated their staff and citizens, and tourists travelling to India were issued cautionary travel advisories. The world watched with bated breath as the subcontinent was taken to the brink of nuclear war. (All this cost India an estimated Rs 10,000 crore of public money. A few hundred soldiers died just in the panicky process of mobilisation.)
Sadly, in the midst of the frenzy, Afzal seems to have forfeited the right to be an individual, a real person any more. He's become a vehicle for everybody's fantasies—nationalists, separatists, and anti-capital punishment activists. He has become India's great villain and Kashmir's great hero—proving only that whatever our pundits, policymakers and peace gurus say, all these years later, the war in Kashmir has by no means ended.
Afsan, who was pregnant when she was arrested, had her baby in prison. Her experience broke her. She now suffers from a serious psychiatric condition.
It can and will be argued that the cases of both S.A.R. Geelani and Iftikhar Gilani serve only to demonstrate the objectivity of the Indian judicial system and its capacity for self-correction, they do not discredit it. That's only partly true. Both Iftikhar Gilani and S.A.R. Geelani are fortunate to be Delhi-based Kashmiris with a community of articulate, middle-class peers; journalists and university teachers, who knew them well and rallied around them in their time of need. S.A.R. Geelani's lawyer Nandita Haksar put together an All India Defence Committee for S.A.R. Geelani (of which I was a member). There was a coordinated campaign by activists, lawyers and journalists to rally behind Geelani. Well-known lawyers Ram Jethmalani, K.G. Kannabiran, Vrinda Grover represented him. They showed up the case for what it was—a pack of absurd assumptions, suppositions, and outright lies, bolstered by fabricated evidence. So of course judicial objectivity exists. But it's a shy beast that lives somewhere deep in the labyrinth of our legal system. It shows itself rarely. It takes whole teams of top lawyers to coax it out of its lair and make it come out and play. It's what in newspaper-speak would be called a Herculean task. Mohammed Afzal did not have Hercules on his side.
For five months, from the time he was arrested to the day the police charge-sheet was filed, Mohammed Afzal, lodged in a high-security prison, had no legal defence, no legal advice. No top lawyers, no defence committee (in India or Kashmir), and no campaign. Of all the four accused, he was the most vulnerable. His case was far more complicated than Geelani's.
For Afzal, everything that could go wrong went wrong. He was incarcerated in a high-security prison, with no access to the outside world, and no money to hire a lawyer professionally. Three weeks into the trial the lawyer appointed by the court asked to be discharged from the case because she had now been professionally hired to be on the team of lawyers for S.A.R. Geelani's defence. The court appointed her junior, a lawyer with very little experience, to represent Afzal. He did not once visit his client in jail to take instructions. He did not summon a single witness for Afzal's defence and barely cross-questioned any of the prosecution witnesses. Five days after he was appointed, on July 8, Afzal asked the court for another lawyer and gave the court a list of lawyers whom he hoped the court might hire for him. Each of them refused. (Given the frenzy of propaganda in the media, it was hardly surprising. At a later stage of the trial, when senior advocate Ram Jethmalani agreed to represent Geelani, Shiv Sena mobs ransacked his Bombay office.) The judge expressed his inability to do anything about this, and gave Afzal the right to cross-examine witnesses. It's astonishing for the judge to expect a layperson to be able cross-examine witnesses in a criminal trial. It's a virtually impossible task for someone who does not have a sophisticated understanding of criminal law, including new laws that had just been passed, like POTA, and the amendments to the Evidence Act and the Telegraph Act. Even experienced lawyers were having to work overtime to bring themselves up to date.
Eventually, both the high court and the Supreme Court set aside Afzal's confession citing 'lapses and violations of procedural safeguards'. But Afzal's confession somehow survives, the phantom keystone in the prosecution's case. And before it was technically and legally set aside, the confessional document had already served a major extra-legal purpose: On December 21, 2001, when the Government of India launched its war effort against Pakistan it said it had 'incontrovertible evidence' of Pakistan's involvement. Afzal's confession was the only 'proof' of Pakistan's involvement that the government had! Afzal's confession. And the sticker-manifesto.Think about it. On the basis of this illegal confession extracted under torture, hundreds of thousands of soldiers were moved to the Pakistan border at huge cost to the public exchequer, and the subcontinent devolved into a game of nuclear brinkmanship in which the whole world was held hostage.
Later, when Afzal's confession was set aside by the higher courts, all talk of Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba ceased. The only other link to Pakistan was the identity of the five dead fidayeen. Mohammed Afzal, still in police custody, identified them as Mohammed, Rana, Raja, Hamza and Haider. The home minister said they "looked like Pakistanis", the police said they were Pakistanis, the trial court judge said they were Pakistanis. And there the matter rests. Had we been told that their names were Happy, Bouncy, Lucky, Jolly and Kidingamani from Scandinavia, we would have had to accept that too. We still don't know who they really are, or where they're from. Is anyone curious? Doesn't look like it. The high court said the "identity of the five deceased thus stands established. Even otherwise it makes no difference. What is relevant is the association of the accused with the said five persons and not their names."
It became clear that the accumulation of lies, fabrications, forged documents and serious lapses in procedure began from the very first day of the investigation. While the high court and Supreme Court judgements have pointed these things out, they have just wagged an admonitory finger at the police, or occasionally called it a 'disturbing feature', which is a disturbing feature in itself. At no point in the trial has the police been seriously reprimanded, leave alone penalised. In fact, almost every step of the way, the Special Cell displayed an egregious disregard for procedural norms. The shoddy callousness with which the investigations were carried out demonstrate a worrying belief that they wouldn't be 'found out,' and if they were, it wouldn't matter very much. Their confidence does not seem to have been misplaced.
A series of prosecution witnesses, most of them shopkeepers, identified Afzal as the man to whom they had sold various things: ammonium nitrate, aluminum powder, sulphur, a Sujata mixer-grinder, packets of dry fruit and so on. Normal procedure would require these shopkeepers to pick Afzal out from a number of people in a test identification parade. This didn't happen. Instead Afzal was identified by them when he 'led' the police to these shops while he was in police custody and introduced to the witnesses as an Accused in the Parliament Attack. (Are we allowed to speculate about whether he led the police or the police led him to the shops? After all he was still in their custody, still vulnerable to torture. If his confession under these circumstances is legally suspect, then why not all of this?)
The judges have pondered the violation of these procedural norms but have not taken them very seriously. They said that they did not see why ordinary members of the public would have reason to falsely implicate an innocent person.
None of the inconsistencies that I have written about so far are the result of spectacular detective work on my part. A lot of them are documented in an excellent book called December 13th: Terror Over Democracy by Nirmalangshu Mukherji; in two reports (Trial of Errors and Balancing Act) published by the Peoples' Union for Democratic Rights, Delhi; and most important of all, in the three thick volumes of judgements of the trial court, the high court and the Supreme Court. All these are public documents, lying on my desk. Why is it that when there is this whole murky universe begging to be revealed, our TV channels are busy staging hollow debates between uninformed people and grasping politicians? Why is it that apart from a few sporadic independent commentators, our newspapers carry front-page stories about who the hangman is going to be, and macabre details about the length (60 metres) and weight (3.75 kg) of the rope that will be used to hang Mohammed Afzal (Indian Express, October 16, 2006).Shall we pause for a moment to say a few hosannas for the Free Press?
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Thursday, December 30, 2010
The learnability of states
Perhaps there is a useful concept around the 'learnability' of states. This refers per my thesis, to the ability of countries to 1.) come to terms with ground realities and not live in a state of wishful thinking 2.) recognize the legitimate (and perhaps not so legitimate) and persistent aspirations of groups of people and do something even if reluctantly, about it 3.) to correct the mainstream view of history regarding an event or events when the party line is wrong or distorted 3.) and to do this in a reasonable timeframe
The Irish 'troubles' are a classic example of lack of learning of a state. It took a huge amount of time (after the initial formation of the independent country of Ireland in the southern part ; a surprisingly forward-thinking decision for colonialist Great Britain) for the UK to come to terms with the conflict in northern Ireland and agree to the final solution that worked there. Simliarly, the Israeli state is learning at a glacial pace in the Palestinian conflict.
In India, the thinking on Kashmir. 60 years after independence, the discussion on Kashmir has pretty much not budged an inch - anything other than Kashmir as a integral part of India is not up for discussion. This is astounding given the dubious nature of the accession of Kashmir to India in the first place, and the incredible amount of conflict, displacement and death over the years. One would expect minimally some form of autonomy to be actively on the discussion agenda, but nope.
And going by this article, perhaps the conventional understanding on China and border issues with them, also needs a significant shift: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/night-of-november-19/729644/0
The relatively sudden shift of China towards capitalism and financial liberalization in India in the nineties are examples of good learning in states perhaps.
The Irish 'troubles' are a classic example of lack of learning of a state. It took a huge amount of time (after the initial formation of the independent country of Ireland in the southern part ; a surprisingly forward-thinking decision for colonialist Great Britain) for the UK to come to terms with the conflict in northern Ireland and agree to the final solution that worked there. Simliarly, the Israeli state is learning at a glacial pace in the Palestinian conflict.
In India, the thinking on Kashmir. 60 years after independence, the discussion on Kashmir has pretty much not budged an inch - anything other than Kashmir as a integral part of India is not up for discussion. This is astounding given the dubious nature of the accession of Kashmir to India in the first place, and the incredible amount of conflict, displacement and death over the years. One would expect minimally some form of autonomy to be actively on the discussion agenda, but nope.
And going by this article, perhaps the conventional understanding on China and border issues with them, also needs a significant shift: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/night-of-november-19/729644/0
The relatively sudden shift of China towards capitalism and financial liberalization in India in the nineties are examples of good learning in states perhaps.
Kissinger jokes
Henry Kissinger's work has many examples of what decent people would find enormous inversions of justice. Like, for example, that he was given the Nobel Peace Prize for bringing an end to the Vietnam war, when he was in actuality responsible for things like the massive bombing of Cambodia as part of that war. Giving him the Nobel was appropriately labeled 'the death of satire' when it happened.
Chomsky is not usually given to humor, and one of the few examples I've seen is in relation to Kissinger, whose guts he really hates. Debunking one of Kissinger's arguments where he says that that Western civilisation has a culture of 'toleration' (never mind a couple of World Wars and decades of colonial cruelty), Chomsky comments with an undertone of frustration and bitterness: "One can always count on K for some comic relief, though in reality, he is not alone" ( http://www.iran-bulletin.org/history/chomsky3.html)
And finally one from that fantastic commentator on US political affairs, Gary Trudeau author of the Doonesbury cartoons. In a series of strips, Kissinger is visiting faculty at a Washington DC university and leading a course while doing his stuff as Secretary of State. While he tries to use the seminar to talk about realpolitik and world domination and such, there are one or two idealists in the class who keep bringing up useless questions about truth, justice and the suffering of the common man. Finally Kissinger in frustration bursts out "Human rights! Human rights! I'm sick and tired of human rights!"
Touche. Sometimes I feel a similiar sentiment : "Climate change! Climate change! I'm sick and tired of climate change!"
For perhaps a more rounded portrayal of Kissinger, see the Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Kissinger
Chomsky is not usually given to humor, and one of the few examples I've seen is in relation to Kissinger, whose guts he really hates. Debunking one of Kissinger's arguments where he says that that Western civilisation has a culture of 'toleration' (never mind a couple of World Wars and decades of colonial cruelty), Chomsky comments with an undertone of frustration and bitterness: "One can always count on K for some comic relief, though in reality, he is not alone" ( http://www.iran-bulletin.org/history/chomsky3.html)
And finally one from that fantastic commentator on US political affairs, Gary Trudeau author of the Doonesbury cartoons. In a series of strips, Kissinger is visiting faculty at a Washington DC university and leading a course while doing his stuff as Secretary of State. While he tries to use the seminar to talk about realpolitik and world domination and such, there are one or two idealists in the class who keep bringing up useless questions about truth, justice and the suffering of the common man. Finally Kissinger in frustration bursts out "Human rights! Human rights! I'm sick and tired of human rights!"
Touche. Sometimes I feel a similiar sentiment : "Climate change! Climate change! I'm sick and tired of climate change!"
For perhaps a more rounded portrayal of Kissinger, see the Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Kissinger
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
I did another review recently, this time for Pratham Books, a really good children's book publisher in India. They sent out books to people to review, and I got one.
Visit their very nice blog at blog.prathambooks.org and their impressive social media outreach at social.prathambooks.org. And while you're at it, their website: www.prathambooks.org :-)
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"Grandfather Goes on Strike" is a good book that takes on an environmental issue and makes it accessible to young readers. Sathya's grandfather decides to climb a tree and stay there in order to prevent it from being cut down to construct houses. Sathya is staying alone with his grandfather so on his young shoulders falls the predicament of handling this situation. A stream of visitors, policemen, environmentalists, artists and councillors have to be managed, along with grandfather's well-being, but finally all ends well for both grandfather and the tree.
A very nice feature of this book is the understated humor.
Grandfather grinned: "I cannot hear anything you say, because of the breeze". There was no breeze. There was not even a breath of air.
I hope the child readers get the deadpan humor of jokes such as these.
The book does a good job of being realistic and true-to-life without being boring. The policemens' personalities are done well in text and illustration. The artists are intriguing, they seem to tread a fine line between being superficial do-gooders and being more substantive changemakers. I am not sure what the author had in mind! A few elements are glossed over: How does grandfather manage sleep, poop and pee up in the tree? If the land belongs to someone else, what about his right to use the land as he feels fit?
The book is a welcome addition to Read India's line. Congrats to the author, illustrator and Read India. But one also feels a small disappointment, that still more could have been done to make the book engaging and fun.
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and some specific niggles:
1.) The text transition from page 2 to page 3 is not so good
2.) "There was a flash news in a box" - grammatically incorrect ?
3.) "Just then Ramya and Priya, my cousins brought us a flask of steaming, hot coffee". If there were cousins around, where were their parents, and why did the cousins not help out more ?
4.) "Meanwhile breakfast arrived". From where ?!
5.) In one illustration, the councillors are shown wearing suits and carrying briefcases, which is unlikely in India.
Visit their very nice blog at blog.prathambooks.org and their impressive social media outreach at social.prathambooks.org. And while you're at it, their website: www.prathambooks.org :-)
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"Grandfather Goes on Strike" is a good book that takes on an environmental issue and makes it accessible to young readers. Sathya's grandfather decides to climb a tree and stay there in order to prevent it from being cut down to construct houses. Sathya is staying alone with his grandfather so on his young shoulders falls the predicament of handling this situation. A stream of visitors, policemen, environmentalists, artists and councillors have to be managed, along with grandfather's well-being, but finally all ends well for both grandfather and the tree.
A very nice feature of this book is the understated humor.
Grandfather grinned: "I cannot hear anything you say, because of the breeze". There was no breeze. There was not even a breath of air.
I hope the child readers get the deadpan humor of jokes such as these.
The book does a good job of being realistic and true-to-life without being boring. The policemens' personalities are done well in text and illustration. The artists are intriguing, they seem to tread a fine line between being superficial do-gooders and being more substantive changemakers. I am not sure what the author had in mind! A few elements are glossed over: How does grandfather manage sleep, poop and pee up in the tree? If the land belongs to someone else, what about his right to use the land as he feels fit?
The book is a welcome addition to Read India's line. Congrats to the author, illustrator and Read India. But one also feels a small disappointment, that still more could have been done to make the book engaging and fun.
=====
and some specific niggles:
1.) The text transition from page 2 to page 3 is not so good
2.) "There was a flash news in a box" - grammatically incorrect ?
3.) "Just then Ramya and Priya, my cousins brought us a flask of steaming, hot coffee". If there were cousins around, where were their parents, and why did the cousins not help out more ?
4.) "Meanwhile breakfast arrived". From where ?!
5.) In one illustration, the councillors are shown wearing suits and carrying briefcases, which is unlikely in India.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Vibhat September 2010
Since my last upload Vibhat has developed enormously as this video shows. He's walking very comfortably, enormously curious about all objects, physically stronger with better motor skills and is developing a personality
Saturday, August 28, 2010
On education
What is the purpose of education? There are many answers, and three common ones are below:
-'to succeed in the fast-paced, competitive modern world' (an answer that I find particularly moronic)
-'to equip the child with the knowledge and skills to find work to support themselves'
-'to discover one's talents'
Are you satisfied by any of the above answers ? I'm not, in fact I'm tremendous dissatisfied with the education system (of personal interest now that I am a father). Human minds are complex. We experience emotions - joy, anger, jealousy, contempt,love. We complain about other peoples' actions and justify ours. But do we have to take all these as given, these things are how we are, or is it possible to 'step outside' of oneself, and be able to observe how our minds work, why we react the way we react, what are the hidden motivations or insecurities. As the child is growing up and its character being formed - is it possible to have serious conversations about the rather imperfect nature of the world we live in, with how we rationalize the way we (in India atleast) make our peace with the enormous poverty and suffering outside our doorsteps in order to carry on our lives. Is it possible to teach children to be decent, happy individuals ?
Can we teach children to be alive to the mystery of life ? Here we are, blobs of protoplasm with odd projections that enable us to locomote manipulate, on a large orb circling a ball of fire, in the middle of a vastness we cannot comprehend. We are one in billions today and have been preceded by billions and will be followed by billions. So how do we come to terms with all this ? Normally all this is pushed to the back of the mind so we can get on with the day to day business of life, survival, freedom from pain and discomfort, pleasure, achievement and all that ? Can we teach our children to do a better of job of this than us? And what of the infinite complexity and variety of life on earth. Can we teach our children to be open to that?
Schools have to teach maths, physics and geography and so on. But if we as parents and teachers don't weave in the above we have lost the spirit of education. And this is the state of affairs across the board. I am sure the most expensive and fancy schools don't do that much better of a job than the middle-class schools in this, because the management and the parents are as much invested in the status quo of the world today, in fact even more, so that they are uninterested in questioning it.
Post Script:
We were casually talking about something related to schools at work once, and during that I spontaneously burst out: "I have zero faith in the educational system!". I was myself suprised by my vehemence as it was not premeditated, and to some extent I didn't even know that I felt this way. Some subsequent reflection resulted in the picture I lay out above. I find it ironic that having done excellently by conventional standards in most of my education, I now am completely disdaining it. But all the reflection, discovery and learning that happened for me, mostly slowly and haltingly, completely parallel to or outside the educational system, is central to what I am today. I see that as a tremendous failure of the education system.
I don't think many people feel so negatively about schools as I do. This leads to a nicely ironic dilemma for me: at least others are comfortable with the current system, and they are true to themselves if they don't fight against it. If I don't, I am being a complete fake. And the job I am talking about above is so gigantic and so seems so much beyond my capabilities.
The above thoughts are tremendously influenced by J. Krishnamurti's writings. But I have internalized them so completely and find them so obvious now, that I am not parroting what someone else is saying.
"It is our earth, not yours or mine or his. We are meant to live on it, helping each other, not destroying each other. This is not some romantic nonsense, but the actual fact"
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Orhan Pamuk's 'Istanbul'
DONT READ IF YOU HAVENT READ AND PLAN TO READ ORHAN PAMUK's CLASSIC 'ISTANBUL'
The superb dramatic ending of Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul. To get the full effect, you have to read the book. Nevertheless, the context is that the young Pamuk is a very talented painter but gives it up temporarily after a painful breakup with his lover and muse. Meanwhile he drops out of architecture school and is having huge frequent fights with his mother who is adamant that there is no future or career for a painter in Turkey and that he must finish his architecture degree. Often he would leave the house in a rage after one of these fights and wander the streets all night:
"On my way up to Taksim, I'd stop for a moment to look at the lights of Galata in the half dark view, and then I'd head for Beyoglu to spend a few minutes browsing through the bookstalls at the beginning of Istiklal Avenue, and after that I'd stop for a beer and vodka in one of those beer halls where the television drowned out the noisy crowd, and smoke a cigarette, as everyone else was doing (I'd look around me to see if there happened to be any famous poets, writers or artists sitting nearby) and when I felt I was attracting too much attention from all those mustachioed men - because I was looking around me, and alone and had a child's face - I would go out again to mingle with the night. After walking down the avenue for a little I'd head into the back streets of Beyoglu and when I had reached Cukurcuma, Galata, Cihangir, I would pause to gaze at the holos of the streetlamps and the light from a nearby television screen flickering on the wet pavements, and it would be while peering into a junk shop, a refrigrator that an ordinary grocer used as a window display, a pharmacy still displaying a mannequin I remember from my childhood, that I would realize how very happy I was. The sublime, dizzying, pure anger I felt at this moment, after listening to my mother, would leave me after an hour of wandering around Beyoglu - or Uskudar, or the back streets of Fatih - wherever I went, as I got colder and colder, I'd be warmend by the furious flame of my brilliant future. By then my head would be light from the beer and the long exertion, and the mournful streets would seem to flicker as in an old film, a moment I would want to freeze and hide away - the way I used to hide a precious seed or a favourite marble in my mouth for hours on end - and at the same moment, I'd want to leave the empty streets and return home to sit down at my desk with pencil and paper to write or draw."
And then one day, the insight that resolves everything ...
"The streets of Beyoglu, their dark corners, my desire to run away, my guilt - they were all blinking on and off like neon lights in my head. I knew now that tonight my mother and I wouldn't have our fight, that in a few minutes I would open the door and escape into the city's consoling streets; and having walked away half the night, I'd return home and sit down at my table and capture their chemistry on paper.
"I don't want to be an artist", I said. "I'm going to be a writer".
The superb dramatic ending of Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul. To get the full effect, you have to read the book. Nevertheless, the context is that the young Pamuk is a very talented painter but gives it up temporarily after a painful breakup with his lover and muse. Meanwhile he drops out of architecture school and is having huge frequent fights with his mother who is adamant that there is no future or career for a painter in Turkey and that he must finish his architecture degree. Often he would leave the house in a rage after one of these fights and wander the streets all night:
"On my way up to Taksim, I'd stop for a moment to look at the lights of Galata in the half dark view, and then I'd head for Beyoglu to spend a few minutes browsing through the bookstalls at the beginning of Istiklal Avenue, and after that I'd stop for a beer and vodka in one of those beer halls where the television drowned out the noisy crowd, and smoke a cigarette, as everyone else was doing (I'd look around me to see if there happened to be any famous poets, writers or artists sitting nearby) and when I felt I was attracting too much attention from all those mustachioed men - because I was looking around me, and alone and had a child's face - I would go out again to mingle with the night. After walking down the avenue for a little I'd head into the back streets of Beyoglu and when I had reached Cukurcuma, Galata, Cihangir, I would pause to gaze at the holos of the streetlamps and the light from a nearby television screen flickering on the wet pavements, and it would be while peering into a junk shop, a refrigrator that an ordinary grocer used as a window display, a pharmacy still displaying a mannequin I remember from my childhood, that I would realize how very happy I was. The sublime, dizzying, pure anger I felt at this moment, after listening to my mother, would leave me after an hour of wandering around Beyoglu - or Uskudar, or the back streets of Fatih - wherever I went, as I got colder and colder, I'd be warmend by the furious flame of my brilliant future. By then my head would be light from the beer and the long exertion, and the mournful streets would seem to flicker as in an old film, a moment I would want to freeze and hide away - the way I used to hide a precious seed or a favourite marble in my mouth for hours on end - and at the same moment, I'd want to leave the empty streets and return home to sit down at my desk with pencil and paper to write or draw."
And then one day, the insight that resolves everything ...
"The streets of Beyoglu, their dark corners, my desire to run away, my guilt - they were all blinking on and off like neon lights in my head. I knew now that tonight my mother and I wouldn't have our fight, that in a few minutes I would open the door and escape into the city's consoling streets; and having walked away half the night, I'd return home and sit down at my table and capture their chemistry on paper.
"I don't want to be an artist", I said. "I'm going to be a writer".
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Sensible things to do on (next) Independance day
1.) Join the Clean Bengaluru campaign and clean up some area of Bangalore (www.cbengaluru.com)
2.) Revisit and reflect on the freedom struggle by watching a movie or reading a book. "Gandhi" by Attenborough is of course the default option, but there are some other less known options like movies on Bhagat Singh.
3.) Acknowledge people who serve you. At our apartment complex they gave some recognition (including monetary) to some employees who had helped put out a fire. A really nice thing to do.
4.)Spend time at an old age home, orphanage kind of place, like Sourav Gupta. Or take the opportunity to donate some money to them.
5.) DON'T take part in meaningless displays of patriotism like flag-hoisting or singing the national anthem.
2.) Revisit and reflect on the freedom struggle by watching a movie or reading a book. "Gandhi" by Attenborough is of course the default option, but there are some other less known options like movies on Bhagat Singh.
3.) Acknowledge people who serve you. At our apartment complex they gave some recognition (including monetary) to some employees who had helped put out a fire. A really nice thing to do.
4.)Spend time at an old age home, orphanage kind of place, like Sourav Gupta. Or take the opportunity to donate some money to them.
5.) DON'T take part in meaningless displays of patriotism like flag-hoisting or singing the national anthem.
Wednesday, August 04, 2010
Notes on "Inception"
I saw it twice running on the same day to catch everything I had missed and get the movie out of my system :-)
'Matrix' did it already so in that way this one didn't blow the mind the way Matrix did. But still probably the best movie of the year? And certainly better than Avatar (thank god they didn't do this in distracting 3d).
The visuals and settings were gorgeous and pitch-perfect (except for the goofup with the carpet :-). And same with the acting.
Lot of gratuitous shoot-em-up.
The main motivator of one company battling other felt flat, did not have an importance or urgency to it.
And isn't it gratifying and amazing that a big-budget Hollywood film would do something like this without putting the romantic angle to Codd/Ariadne ?
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PS: It isn't a co-incidence that the two blog posts I squeezed in, in a long time, happened when Priya and the kid were away. A one-year old is a real time consumer even for a hands off dad.
'Matrix' did it already so in that way this one didn't blow the mind the way Matrix did. But still probably the best movie of the year? And certainly better than Avatar (thank god they didn't do this in distracting 3d).
The visuals and settings were gorgeous and pitch-perfect (except for the goofup with the carpet :-). And same with the acting.
Lot of gratuitous shoot-em-up.
The main motivator of one company battling other felt flat, did not have an importance or urgency to it.
And isn't it gratifying and amazing that a big-budget Hollywood film would do something like this without putting the romantic angle to Codd/Ariadne ?
==
PS: It isn't a co-incidence that the two blog posts I squeezed in, in a long time, happened when Priya and the kid were away. A one-year old is a real time consumer even for a hands off dad.
Sunday, August 01, 2010
Notes from Raghuram Rajan's talk
The UChicago BSchool professor who was Chief Economist at the IMF for a few years, and gained prominence recently for having 'predicted' the financial meltdown talked at Bangalore today, mostly about the root causes of the meltdown and also about India. The main talk did not resonate much with me but a few points that did:
* India will be the 2nd or 3rd largest economy in the world in a couple of years he said (I think he must have meant 4th, or else he was referring to many more years than just a couple). Do we have the thinking going on that would be needed for a country with that clout ? Like geopolitical thinking ; what should be our policy towards different countries/blocs, towards Africa ? A country like the US has a whole bunch of people discussing and debating these kind of things, and finally it crystallises into policy. Absolutely I agree -- there is a complete lack of depth in thinking about all the many areas of a complex industrialized (post industrialized) society. (Now this is where I step in ...)
* He felt that land/real estate has become a stumbling block for India's growth. Like if you have land or control of land then you can make money and if you don't, you don't. There is lot of lack of trasparency and distortion in land ; political people influence things unfairly, who you know matters. He also cited POSCO which has been trying for a long time to get land for its plant in Orissa. While I don't agree with the POSCO example (there is a lot of popular resistance to this from the local people), I agree completely to the broader point. When I see all the building construction in the cities of India, it gives me a very uneasy feeling. I've tried to analyse this and usually conclude that putting up such large buildings feels such a complex business and requires so much financing, that it makes me feel very small in comparison. But now I think the kind of thing Rajan was talking about also feeds into it ; the whole business of real estate is so opaque and criminalized and common people feel completely helpless in front of the forces involved. This shouldn't be.
* He pointed to UID and cash transfers (apparently being proposed) as critical pieces to stem the massive leakage and put more power in peoples' hands.
*Government's role need not be as a service provider per se. in areas like education and healthcare, the critical thing is that govt. plays a transparent regulatory role, so that whoever is delivering the service is constrainted to deliver a certain quality.
* India will be the 2nd or 3rd largest economy in the world in a couple of years he said (I think he must have meant 4th, or else he was referring to many more years than just a couple). Do we have the thinking going on that would be needed for a country with that clout ? Like geopolitical thinking ; what should be our policy towards different countries/blocs, towards Africa ? A country like the US has a whole bunch of people discussing and debating these kind of things, and finally it crystallises into policy. Absolutely I agree -- there is a complete lack of depth in thinking about all the many areas of a complex industrialized (post industrialized) society. (Now this is where I step in ...)
* He felt that land/real estate has become a stumbling block for India's growth. Like if you have land or control of land then you can make money and if you don't, you don't. There is lot of lack of trasparency and distortion in land ; political people influence things unfairly, who you know matters. He also cited POSCO which has been trying for a long time to get land for its plant in Orissa. While I don't agree with the POSCO example (there is a lot of popular resistance to this from the local people), I agree completely to the broader point. When I see all the building construction in the cities of India, it gives me a very uneasy feeling. I've tried to analyse this and usually conclude that putting up such large buildings feels such a complex business and requires so much financing, that it makes me feel very small in comparison. But now I think the kind of thing Rajan was talking about also feeds into it ; the whole business of real estate is so opaque and criminalized and common people feel completely helpless in front of the forces involved. This shouldn't be.
* He pointed to UID and cash transfers (apparently being proposed) as critical pieces to stem the massive leakage and put more power in peoples' hands.
*Government's role need not be as a service provider per se. in areas like education and healthcare, the critical thing is that govt. plays a transparent regulatory role, so that whoever is delivering the service is constrainted to deliver a certain quality.
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