Sunny Singh Online

In the Jaipur Tamasha, India Lost

2012-01-24T17:02:00.000Z

I began 2012 with a personal resolution that I would try to not write about India for the next few weeks. The reason is simple: my relationship with my country is a dysfunctional, obsessive one. Like an addict, I try to wean myself off it but with the first whiff, I am back neck-deep, flailing, drowning, furiously and hopelessly in love, clinging to it even while it continues to humiliate, abuse and batter me. Yes, India is my first, only and forever abusive lover! No surprises then, the Jaipur Literature Festival tamasha managed to blow my new year's resolution to smithereens even before the first month is out.

Any way, here goes....

There are many aspects to the complete tamasha that has unfolded in Jaipur, and I do mean apply the word with all its colourful, gloriously populist, condescendingly elite connotations. Like Waiting for Godot, the catalyst for the tamasha has remained off-stage, and for those of us who believe in creative freedom and the rule of law, or love words and stories, Salman Rushdie's absence is a tragedy.

The tamasha was manufactured primarily by Rajasthan's state government (led by that ever shining bastion of liberal thought, the Congress party), ably abetted by the party machinery and embedded corporate media, and benignly watched over by Her Highness Lady Sphinx and her two heir-lings. Between them, they manufactured reports of a threat to Rushdie's life: apparently, as the now-discredited story goes, Mumbai underworld had taken out a supari on the writer's life and three gunmen were on their way. Rushdie was thus convinced to cancel his visit. A point to note here is crucial: at this point, the state government had actually not raised the legal issue of his presence at the festival but merely used security as a barely credible cover for its decision. The state also managed to compound its idiocy by finally disallowing even a video-conference with the writer, again on 'security' grounds although, in all fairness, they could have kept all those policewallas who had been called to provide security to Oprah around.

Of course, various other parties including the BJP, with eyes on the UP assembly elections prize, jumped on the bandwagon. Not surprisingly, today, with much ipso facto courage, Sheila Dixit, Arun Jaitley and various others are inviting Rushdie to various other parts of India, especially Delhi, presumably to offend cosmopolitan Dilliwalas in ways those rustic Rajasthanis couldn't bear or have tea with HH Lady Sphinx who shall say more nothing!

On to the second act: the festival started and four writers showed the courage of their convictions and read out from The Satanic Verses, only to find themselves muzzled not by the state government but cowardly organisers. And yes, it is necessary to point out that the organisers of the festival could have taken a far stronger stance which would be backed by Indian law: there is nothing as far as I can find, and although I am no lawyer, I have checked with colleagues in the profession, that bars anyone from reading out excerpts from the work, or indeed the entire novel in entirety. The same organisers then expanded their role by issuing a stern press release and making utterly ridiculous statements about how the four writers had read the excerpts without the permission or knowledge of the organisers. Really? Now writers must clear the content of their presentations a priori with literary festivals? So much for freedom of speech then!

On the sidelines, or perhaps it ought to be the chorus line, of the tamasha of course, there has been much hand-wringing by various Indian literati in various media. The usual faces and names have written blog posts and editorials, done rounds of television studios, and made grandiose statements that can only be distinguished by the degrees of hypocrisy and feigned passion. However, in the clamour, a basic point has been lost: freedom of speech is a cherished quality for any civilised society and even more crucial for a democracy but it is threatened as much by a cowardly state, and an unthinking mob, as it is by the hypocrisy of its apparently loyal defenders.

For decades, India's liberal elite has tried to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds (yes, had to throw in a hunting analogy, just for my UK readers). They have selectively chosen their causes and battles on the issue of freedom of speech, rallying behind their own social peers and off-springs and always from the comfort of their plush homes, while silencing those they feel are beneath them. After all, it was Khushwant Singh who advised Penguin India against publishing Rushdie's novel in the first instance. It was a Congress government, backed by all the diamond-dripping and khadi-wearing socialites who banned the import of the novel into the country. And it is the same elite that has stifled any reasoned, nuanced debate about freedom of speech in the country, choosing to turn even this basic precept into a tool for gaining political advantage!

Much of our media and intelligentsia are so closely tied to the country's political establishment that they have forsaken any ability to take a stance that may be intellectually rigorous and ethically sound (here, the organisers of the festival are a good example: to maintain their position as embedded cultural elite in Delhi, they must bow to their political patrons).

And yes, let me be very clear, it is critical that we in India discuss freedom of speech in an open and nuanced manner. Since the mainstream media has forsaken its role in the process or at least given up any ambitions of making a complex case, it is up to the citizens ourselves.

Even the most absolutist supporters of freedom of speech realise that there are reasonable limits. There are some clear cut instances that are self-evident: shouting fire in a crowded theatre is one such example. We may even argue that reporting on army's gun positions during a war (as happened during Kargil) is another case for limiting freedom of speech, although this already takes us towards the slippery slope and national interest alone, and especially determined by the state, cannot be the sole determinant of the issue. Here we go more into the area of ethics and personal responsibility that are matter for another post, although sadly, in current times, much is said of rights and very little of responsibilities.

However, the situation gets very muddy when it comes to art. A point made consistently by various sides has been that Rushdie's novel "offends sentiments" of a particular religious community. Similar cases have been made about Tasleema Nasreen (although I found the quality of writing more offensive than the content in that case!), Rohinton Mistry who apparently offended all of Mumbai, A.K Ramanujam who offended Hindus by studying the many versions of Ramayana and lauding the ancient Indic tradition of multiplicity. Then of course there is the case of the much lauded MF Hussain who apparently offended Hindus with his paintings to become a martyr of free speech, and yet wilted at the sign of first Muslim protests to cravenly withdraw his film Meenaxi from theatres. And lest we forget, Bollywood songs have managed to offend shoemakers and paan-sellers as well!

As the cases above demonstrate, there is no dearth of people willing to take offence, and only logical way forward is for the state to first take a clear and principle stand on freedom of speech. The state must not begin to determine - either in practice or theory - which of the many offended groups must take precedence, although this arbitrary policy has yielded a great deal of political capital all around in the past 60+ years.

However, beyond the state, the onus for taking a clear and principled stand also falls on the nation's intelligentsia, artists and opinionmakers. This means established writers, artists, critics and scholars need to speak out for the right to free expression for all, based on a principled stance, and not only when they find a convenient situation or in favour of those they agree with. Unfortunately, at the moment, they function more as collaborators and enablers of the state in stifling freedom of expression!

And finally, there is the citizenry. In general, the discussions and blogs have been frank, intelligent, innovative. Discussions both on and off line have demonstrated that political parties in the country may be in for a big surprise as increasing numbers of citizens are stepping away from the politics of offence. Again, I have noticed the difference in opinion between the self-avowed representative and leaders of Indian Muslims and Muslim citizenry itself: many leaders are in for a total shock in not too distant future!

At the same time, I must say I have been deeply disappointed by some of the discussions on this topic on-line, even though I am the first to admit that using on-line engagement is a flawed form of sampling a population. There is a mirror reflection of Islamist fringe to be found amongst the fringes of the self-professed Hindutva supporters. I found their ignorance of their own traditions and texts disappointing, but was horrified by their brash refusal to actually bother learning anything about their heritage. If their hubristic "right to remain ignorant" is any indication of those who take offence, then I sincerely hope this post offends them deeply.

But more than anything else, I am terribly saddened that in the tamashaa that unfolded in Jaipur, there was only one loser: India. I hope in these times of competitive offence taking, somebody other than me takes offence at that!

Full disclosure: perhaps some of my critique of the hypocrisy of India's liberal cultural elite may appear harsh but I have had first hand experience of them over the years. My favourite moment however involves a top editor who wrote me an email breaking the publication contract for a novel which she deemed too controversial. Many of the same names who regularly and hysterically defend free speech told me' off the record' - when the book did come out - that they could not review it for the same reasons. To all of them, don't worry, the book has done very well in India and abroad, in spite of you and despite zero controversy.

The Self-Immolation Protests in Arab Spring: Why and Why Now?

2012-01-22T23:15:00.001Z

This post is meant to raise questions about an aspect of the Arab Spring that has confused me since the very beginning. I must state right at the beginning that I do not have the answers, or even the inklings of an answer. I am hoping to get a discussion started so I can begin to understand this phenomenon, so apologies in advance if you are disappointed!

As is well-known now, the uprising in Tunisia began with a young street vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, setting himself on fire in protest against the humiliations and hardships he faced daily. The act triggered off mass protests, leading to the removal of the country's long time dictator, Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, which in turn ignited mass protests across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, bringing down two more dictators in 2011 and rattling the regimes of pretty much every other despot.

During the same period, a strange and disturbing pattern has emerged in the region: protest by self-immolations.

In Tunisia, there were 107 incidents in the first six months of 2011. Algeria reported multiple incidents as well through 2011, with at least four deaths. In the immediate aftermath of the Tunisian uprising, there were similar incidents reported in Egypt as well, although these seemed to dwindle once Mubarak stepped down. A scan of these incidents in Egypt seems to place them in the days soon after the Tunisian revolution with a marked decline once the January 25th movement kicked off (perhaps closest to copycat acts as discussed later). In the first three weeks of 2012 alone, there have been the cases of a man in Jordan and a depressed mother of a prisoner in Bahrain, both of whom died, as well as five protesters in Morocco, two of whom remain in serious condition in the hospital. In 2011, there were cases of self-immolation reported in Saudi Arabia, Mauritania, Ethiopia and Syria, so covering a rather large range of geography and conditions.

One aspect of these incidents are that many of these involve people protesting quite small yet significant acts of injustice: trouble in claiming pensions, electricity being cut off, protesting the right to food or shelter, or simple dignity as in case of Bouazizi. Much of the press both in the region, as well overseas, has attributed self-immolation protests to the despair felt by the people and their anger at quotidian humiliations. No doubt, both of these play a significant part in these acts, although they are by no means sufficient as explanation.

However, what escapes understanding is the emergence of this specific act of protest in a region where there is no tradition of self-immolation for any reason. First of all, suicide is unacceptable under Islam, which is one reason that suicide attacks have been so heatedly debated in the region and have only a grudging acceptance by most mainstream Islamic scholars (this is not to say that there are not ample supporters of the tactic in both religious and political circles). The point is that even suicide attacks can be justified only thinly on theological grounds and by specific schools of Islamist thought; most groups - including (in)famously the Palestinians ones - use the practice for a range of strategic and tactical purposes, especially political/societal survival, retaliation and competition. More importantly, suicide attacks build on earlier historical memories and ideals, and are often explained as the latest manifestations of militant heroic martyrdom, and thus within - albeit on the margins - of older martial traditions of jihad. It is precisely this final reasoning that is employed by contemporary theologians to make sense of this tactic.

However, the case of self-immolation is quite different. It clearly violates the Islamic principle of not violating the body and/or corpse, especially one's own. It cannot be fit into any militant heroic martyrdom tradition as it is an act of protest turned entirely upon oneself.

Indeed, it may only vaguely fit Durkheim's concept of 'altruistic suicide', despite the attempts by the media to fit these acts into a 'martyrdom' narrative. Much of the media and activist narrative around self-immolations is that some how they were acts of protest, motivated by defiance or a Durkheim-ian 'over-integration into the society' and therefore a sense of responsibility towards the larger collective. Instead, if anything, these acts, at least on a closer look seem to be closer to Durkheim's definition of the 'fatalistic suicide,' one that he had even in 1897 dismissed as of little consequence to modern societies (how premature that was!!). However, it is fatalistic suicide that Durkheim had associated most with 'over-regulation' or moral or physical despotic excess, noting that it occurred amongst populations who felt their futures were blocked and their natural passions oppressed.

However, self-immolation is not simply an act of fatalistic suicide. It is a particularly public way to self-destruct, holding within the act itself incredible expressive, symbolic potential, which is the primary reason for its longevity in certain societies. As an act of protest, and perhaps more closely linked to Durkheim's notion of altruistic suicide, it is deeply rooted within the Indic traditions as well amongst various Buddhist societies of Asia. After all, it was the monks of South Vietnam immolating themselves in protest in 1963 that brought the term into common usage in western media. Again in India, it has been used in protests, with the Mandal protests seeing some of the most prominent incidents. In the past few years, Tibetan monks have continued the practice as a form of protest against Chinese occupation.

Yet none of this makes sense why this act has emerged in the MENA region, in cultures as diverse as Tunisia, Bahrain and Egypt? Or indeed why it has emerged in the region at this particular time. There is little by way of influence or motivation or trajectories that I can find for self-immolations as a form of protest in these countries. Moreover, the region, as far as I can see, does not have any historical tradition of self-immolation, not only for protest but for any reason at all. Even if we took a misplaced essentialist stance that the region is tied by Islam as a binding factor (a fallacy in itself), we would be left wondering why then a significant amount of the population would choose to defy the religion's crucial precepts.

Again, if we attempt to write these off as fatalistic suicides, we are left wondering why the people across an extraordinary range of backgrounds, cultures, genders, and ages would choose the same method? If these are to be considered copy-cat acts, and we may well agree that the immolations in Egypt in January 2011 could well count as such, we are left wondering at the gaps of time or indeed the complications in the cluster contagion that create reasoning anomalies (I could be wrong here so expert dissent is very welcome). How would we explain Bouazizi self-immolation in Tunisia in December 2010 as a point of contagion for Badriya Ali's act in Bahrain in January 2012. The copy cat explanation begins to seem a little too pat to hold water, at least for me.

Furthermore, there is the aspect of media narrative and attention. It is true that Bouazizi's act was immediately declared an act of martyrdom by political activists, but there is little evidence that he had acted out of political principles. Moreover, if we consider the acts following his as copycats, then what triggered his own choice of self-immolation as the method of self-destructive protest?

Self-immolation is a particularly horrific and public act of suicide, but it is also primarily an act of expressive violence. It has few instrumental goals that can be served, beyond the self-destruction of the individual. In contrast to the Buddhist monks of Vietnam or Tibet, whose social and moral status imbues them with greater symbolic potency, or the students in India where a long tradition of self-immolation provides a moral legitimacy to the act, in MENA region, these are in some ways lone acts, excised from the theology of the dominant religion and alien to the cultural ethos of the societies of the actors. As far as I have been able to research, there have been no fatwas or other theological support from Islamic clerics or schools for these acts (not a surprise!). The declarations of martyrdom have been generated primarily from the activists, who in many countries listed above are still battling for not only political space but also legitimacy, so their impact can be queried.

The question of why self-immolation and why now remains thus unanswered. The press may call it a result of daily humiliations, or attribute it it lack of jobs; political activists may declare these political acts of martyrdom, but these are justifications not explanations of the phenomenon. I can only hope we don't need many more of these for that explanation to emerge.

Full disclosure: I explored the concepts of heroic martyrdom, self-immolation and altruistic suicide in my last novel so this is a topic that I have long attempted to understand.

Final note: I asked on twitter about the topic and want to thank the following for their insights and thoughts: @FouadMD, @princeofthenile @Thabet_UAE for their generosity in discussing the topic with me.

Writing on Egypt Again: This is the Beginning

2011-11-20T00:48:00.003Z

I have stayed away from posting on Egypt in the past few months. There are many reasons for this, but the foremost amongst them is my absolute belief that only the Egyptians have the right to shape their narrative and their futures, and any writing at this point by foreigners distracts from their amazing struggle to sieze control of their own story.

This is really the reason I have not commented on the horrific Maspero violence by the country's military regime. I have also not commented on Maikel Nabil, even though in many ways, for an Indian, he embodies the greatest of our nonviolent traditions and we could take a lesson from him.

However, tonight I feel compelled to write. Not because Egypt's revolution has stalled or 'Arab Spring' has come to a halt (as many western commenters insist, perhaps all too wishfully). I write because I am tired of being asked why there are still protesters at Tahrir; why they are not more concerned with the country's economic development; why the country's activists are still fighting.

I find the questions depressing. Mostly because these questions are deeply imbued with imperialist views of the 'Arabs' and of Egypt. These are questions that assume that some how when the 'difficulties' are over, Egypt's elite (and how Fanonian is that!) will go back to doing business as usual with Europe and northern America. It ignores the possibility that by the time Egypt's revolution is complete (perhaps in a couple of decades), neither Europe nor America will have the hegemonic political or economic influence to even impact its future.

Also for the record, and just in case, here are my answers: the American Revolution would not have stopped when British conceded on tax rates. Neither would the French accept the pre-revolution heirarchies; and the Russians would scoff at the monarchy after their revolutions. The whole point of revolutions is that they leave nothing unturned.

So without appropriating the narrative space the Egyptians deserve for themselves, let me point to two blog posts I wrote earlier this year: one that considered the past, and the other that pointed the way to the future.

And I want to explicitly point out something I firmly believe: historically Egypt, Turkey and Persia have been the oldest and most clear centres of power in the region, and by extension in other parts of the world (especially Europe). I believe that what we are witnessing is a resurgence of the three, in very different ways and levels. I also believe that the three will find their own spheres of influence and not necessarily go to war - there is little evidence that there is ample 'narcissism of minor differences' to make them compete in bloody ways for that regional power and influence.

This resurgence is all the more interesting (and perhaps possible) because it is occurring alongside the decline of western hegemony: US has shown itself incapable of maturing into history while western Europe is declining into insignificance after nearly five hundred years of direct and indirect hegemony.

Back in March, I wrote: "In the long term, these convulsions of history are unescapable. They will continue - not on media schedules and not for the next few weeks - but into the next couple of decades as historic changes do! At the end, those who put short term interests over long term paradigm shifts will find themselves on the wrong side of history."

I stand by that statement and the analysis even more than ever. What we are witnessing is not a blip in time but a massive and extraordinary change. Not SCAF (Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, Egypt Army's junta) nor USA's paid stooges, nor Saudi Arabia's useful idiots, nor Europe's favourite business boys will be able to withstand the wave that has risen. And whether the revolutionaries stand or fall, live or die, are incarcerated or free, is immaterial. The change is inevitable. The only choice is the side we choose - within Egypt, and abroad - to stand.

And this is why it is necessary to note tonight, even as pitched battles rage in Tahrir Square and Alexandria and elsewhere in Egypt, and protests continue to shake up regimes in the region, that the revolution is not over. Not by a long shot!

No matter how much money and weapons (and 'non-lethal technologies') western nations continue to provide their stooges and clients in the region, the balance of power has already shifted. Yes the convulsions of history have not ceased; yes, the changes are incomplete. But there is no going back. It now only about waiting to see where the sands settle - and that is entirely the choice the people of Egypt (and elsewhere in the region). The rest of us are no more than spectators, and if we choose to be on the right side of history - allies.
http://sunnysinghonline.blogspot.com/2011/03/arab-spring-shifting-sands-convulsing.html

A Very Illiberal Phenomenon Amongst European Liberals

2011-11-16T07:33:00.002Z

This post is an attempt to articulate - instead of fulminate on twitter - a strange phenomenon that I have long observed, often been annoyed by, but never tried to describe: in the past decade of living in Europe, I have found that self-professed 'liberals' - who are actually not liberals but merely left-of-centre ideologues - of this continent have a short-hand for dismissing political, economic, historical and/or cultural views that they cannot refute: simply accuse the person of being 'posh.'

Let me explain what I mean by just one example: a few weeks ago, I was at dinner with friends and was seated next to a Scandinavian journalist, with usual impeccable leftist credentials. We discussed events in the Middle East and North Africa, economic development in BRIC nations, Indian foreign policy and of course, European politics. I disagreed with much of what he said and was clear in my disagreement, backing each point with relevant information and reasoning. As the dessert course came around, this journalist had run out of convincing arguments for his stance. So he chose to pull out the final WMD: he pointed out that my views were obviously wrong because I was part of India's elite! Then, with classic European panache, he backed this statement by asking me my caste.

Fortunately, by this moment, the dinner had come to an end and I left; sadly without tipping the coffee pot over his head.

Now this was not a particularly isolated event. This sort of conversation happens every few weeks, in various countries, with people of varying European nationalities. In fact, I got into a very similar conversation yesterday which led to a furious rant on twitter (scroll down my TL, if you really must). In fact some gems from yesterday included: a reminder that as Hindu I obviously didn't quite understand the purpose of reincarnation the way a Buddhist would (yes I know!); that I should learn from some well recognised Indian authors (ironically all from extremely privileged backgrounds that I could never even dream of equalling) about the reality of Indian poverty; and finally, my 'elite' situation in India prevents me from understanding the true horror of gender inequality faced by Indian women. Never mind that all these gems originated from members of London's white, economically comfortable, politically powerful, cultural establishment!

I got to thinking back on the number of times views that discomfit, challenge or refute dominant 'western' (read European/American) public narratives are either excluded from debate or merely dismissed by similar accusations of elitism. I remembered when listeners of a Barcelona radio programme emailed the host to point out that as I spoke Spanish I was therefore was too elite to understand the "real poverty" in India (never mind, that none of these children of welfare state had ever even been to India!). I remembered the anti-racism activist who breezily commended me on "integrating well" into Europe simply because I wore western clothes and went on beach holidays. I was reminded of the journalist who patronisingly asked me about India and its obviously brutal desire to build dams that flooded villages and, worse still, precious archaeology sites, simply to fuel economic development. Unfortunately, the frequency and ubiquity of these incidents is such we could be here for an extremely long time.

Yet in these strange interactions, there is a pattern to be found. Very few of the above are right-of-centre. In meetings with journalists from conservative media outlets, I may be challenged to defend a viewpoint, but I have never yet been patronised. In meetings with conservative politicians, thinkers, and academics across the European continent, I have been disagreed with, but rarely have I been dismissed as 'elitist' or 'posh' or even most rudely, 'an upper caste.' In fact, I begin to think this is a particularly illiberal aspect of Europe's self-professed liberals!

Of course, the accusations of elitism are absurd when levelled by a historically privileged, white, middle-class man even in the simplest of equations. However, they take on a particularly ridiculous aspect when levelled at someone - like me - who has spent most of her life fighting for the very privileges my accusers take for granted: right to live where and how I want; ability to work at a job that I love; right to be friends and socialise with people without cultural constraints; the opportunity to read and learn and speak my mind. And yes, even these are privileges that I have fought all my life for: a university education that was made possible only through merit-based scholarships and minimum wage jobs; the opportunity to write - and yes, that too is privilege as I neither have the familial riches nor the welfare state to pay my bills while I pursue my 'creative' ambitions; the very small liberty to pick my own partner or indeed choose not to marry at all.

Strangely enough, if I were from a truly elite background, born to rich and powerful parents, married to other rich and powerful people, but could spout leftist incoherence about India and the world, and never once challenged the dominant paradigms of the hegemonic narratives, I would be welcomed as a darling of this very European 'liberal' circle.

You see, my crime - at least in the eyes of western 'liberals' - is the same as that of many millions of Indians (and indeed others of the developing world) who are increasingly climbing past the historical economic and political barriers to claim an equal spot at the table: we are the wrong kind of 'elite.' Self-made, self-taught, fighters to the core, I and many more like me are elite because we have made our way from scratch. And because we are self-made, we are unfettered by the Fanonian psychological baggage that plagues the old established elites from the former colonies. Because we are self-made, we are not beholden to anyone else for our intellectual, economic or political successes. And we are frightening because we cannot be controlled or indeed patronised.

In fact, the only way the western illiberal liberal has to deal with this upcoming 'elite' from developing countries is by dismissing us as 'posh' (complete with its not so subtle corollary of de-racination). Ironically enough, as the world changes (and faster every day), even that won't keep us out of the gates and silent for long.

Gilad Atzmon's The Wandering Who: Incisive, Provocative and Sometimes Dangerous to Read

2011-09-30T14:29:00.002+01:00

Reading is such a personal exercise that the slightest variance can utterly transform the experience and meaning of a book. Remember the affection you hold that mediocre paperback? All because you read it in the golden haze of a summer romance. Or the brilliant, luminous award winner that turns your stomach simply because you read it while nursing a broken heart? I had a strange twist on these normal reading experiences last week. Gilad Atzmon's new book, shall be forever imprinted in my mind as a dangerous one to read!

I tweeted as I began reading The Wandering Who: A Study of Jewish Identity Politics and within hours found myself neck-deep, not in the book itself (I had barely made it to page twenty), but in a maelstrom of utter madness: hateful e-mails, bizarre comments on my blog, fringe Zionist blogs that hurled accusations that I was the newest avatar of the West's contemporary unholy trinity: an anti-Semite, a Nazi sympathizer, and a Holocaust denier. Mind you, all this for saying not whether I liked or agreed with the book but simply because I was reading it. So right at the outset, you have been warned: read the book at your own risk!

As for me, while I read the book, I found myself growing more baffled by the smear campaign both against me (in a very tiny comparative measure) and against Atzmon. The book is certainly provocative, but it doesn't warrant being called anti-Semitic; it is certainly written by a curious, questioning mind, but nothing suggests Holocaust denial; it is definitely critical of Israel's polity and policies, but that hardly merits being smeared as Nazi. In fact, the book is an extensive, thoughtful, informed study of Zionism and the politically charged narratives around, by and for Israel, and their often troublesome, even painful consequences for many Jews. (Note: Atzmon differentiates quite clearly between those who follow Judaism as a religion, are affiliated to it by birth, and those who follow a politico-religious version of the same).

The book begins on a particularly poignant note: the first moment of recognition by the writer of his own belonging to the larger world (brought on by his discovery of jazz), a moment that ruptures the tribal isolation of his upbringing in Israel, and provides initial links and closer affinities with those not of his 'blood tribe' but of a community of intellect, passions and affections. This initial moment is a familiar one: similar explorations of individual and collective identities have been undertaken by many, from varied ethnic, religious, racial, sexual backgrounds. Replace the term Jew/Jewish in the account with another minority group and the book would hardly merit a raised eyebrow.

However, for Atzmon, this initial questioning itself is fraught: Atzmon finds himself in the first Lebanon war, as part of the Israeli military apparatus, and not only questioning but ashamed of his 'blood tribe.' At an Israeli prison camp, he looks at the prisoners, and recognises acute parallels with Nazi concentration camps where his family perished. It is a painful and honest (and brave) moment in the book when Atzmon realises that he is on the wrong side of the fence: in Lebanon, he is the guard, the oppressor, the war criminal, and in a moment a terrible honesty, no different from a Nazi.

From this initial discovery, Atzmon sets off on a personal journey of redemption and it is this long quest that is recorded in this book, complete with its myriad questions, flashes of insights, painful recognition of truths only half-veiled and even less understood. In many ways, and this is both a strength and weakness of the book, this journey is recorded in its full rawness, shorn of polish, literary flourishes, disclaimers and caveats. The raw despair and anger bring passion to the prose which is any writer's greatest strength; at the same time, that very passionate, provocative writing makes it easy for smear campaigners (who never actually read what they attack) to attack the writer. Moreover, at times the hot language obstructs the many valuable arguments Atzmon mounts.

Reading the book, I was consistently reminded of the ways in which 19th century European nationalism impacted the rise of political Islam, in ways not so dissimilar from the construction of Zionist ideology and narratives. Both rely on a combination of persistent victimhood and an aggressive secularised self-assertion (not God but the believer shall resolve all trouble); they also see their own collective selves as constantly under threat and the 'other' as nothing more than the enemy. The narcissism of minor differences indeed!

At many points in the book, I was left thinking of Pakistan, the other religion-based nation-state created around the same time as Israel, which, even after six decades, still struggles with a fragmented sense of self, with an national identity based only on its opposition to others. Focussing on Israel, although the reasoning is equally apt for many other collectives and individuals, Atzmon ably points out the dangers posed by an exclusivist, mono-faceted identity - collective or individual - as well as its horrendous costs.

Atzmon's most provocative sections are those where he addresses the ways in which the dominant Zionist narrative mobilises governments, institutions and individuals in nations beyond Israel. Furthering Mearsheimer and Walt's study of the Israel lobby, Atzmon links popular Zionist idolisation of Hebraic myths of the Book of Esther to specific Zionist economic and political motivations, actions and consequences, and marshalls much historical and current evidence of the "sayanim" or Jews living in exile/diaspora who act for Israel even while professing loyalty to the nation he/she inhabits. (Again this final point is not so different from Islamophobic accusations hurled at Muslims minorities).

Although Atzmon makes a far reaching argument, it is also at this point that he overstates his case, falling into the same Judeo-centric trap he critiques at so many other points in the book. While he argues that Jews are not merely passive victims of history, but also exercise significant agency (in the past and now), here he reduces the "goyim" to the hapless victims of a Jewish/Israeli lobby, thus undermining a powerful case against an organised Zionist lobbying apparatus in the power circles of many western nation-states.

Others have described this book as provocative and insightful, and a useful for read for both Jews and non-Jews. It is all these indeed! But it is also a book that leaves one with more questions than answers, with much to think about, and many faint glimmers of questions to come. Ideally it is the first of many books to explore the topic.

Finally, it must also be noted that in content and style, this is also a quintessentially Israeli book, living up fully to the Israel-created stereotype of the abrasive, brash, arrogant, sabra who uses a hammer to kill a fly. Perhaps Atzmon could have made his case in a more circumspect manner, perhaps even employed gentler language. Perhaps then he - and his readers - would not incite such hysterical aggression and smears. Then again, sometimes a brash, abrasive provocateur is what is required as a catalyst for genuine debate. And this provocative, brash, insightful book is definitely that!

As for Rushdie and Mistry, so for Gilad Atzmon

2011-09-23T14:48:00.002+01:00

UPDATE: The usual Zionist fanatic smear tactics - i.e, accusations of Nazi sympathies, Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism- have been applied to me by on-line anonymous cowards. Not surprisingly, these are the same three charges that being flung by the same rabid loons at the writer and musician, Gilad Atzmon and the eminent scholar, John Mearsheimer. Fortunately, Prof. John Mearsheimer has meticulously and very articulately dismantled the outright lies by these fanatics. If you are a Zionist fanatic, you would not care for the truth and need not bother. However, if you are just a regular reader of this blog and are baffled by the current kerkuffle, you may want to read this piece which details and dismantles the hateful lies and concentrated smear campaign conducted by a handful of fanatics with the sole and clear intent to shut down all reasoned debate on Israel.

And the original post: I am beginning to realise that at least once a year, I use this blog to tell off fanatics. So far, it has been Islamist nut-jobs who got offended by my piece on Salman Rushdie. Then some time later, I wrote about Mumbai and Rohinton Mistry and some Hindu fundamentalists (what an oxymoron that is!) were equally offended. Both these links here will take you to what I wrote in those instances.

Last week I tweeted about Gilad Atzmon's new book and that has apparently offended some Zionist club of fanatics. Apparently, according to tweets and blogs and other online fora where these fanatics dwell, my reading of a book by a dissident Israeli brands me an "anti-Semite", a Holocaust denier and/or a Nazi supporter.

Full disclosure: I know Gilad professionally as we share the same literary agent although by no stretch of imagination can we be considered friends. I like his music and respect his writing and political convictions although there are many points of disagreement as well. And we are bound by our mutual respect and affection for Shimon Tzabar, the literary legend and human being par excellence (and one of the few utterly moral people I have had the privilege of knowing).

What I wrote for Rushdie applies now to the Zionist nut-jobs accusing me of anti-Semitism, and beautifully demonstrating their own narrow-minded, ignorant racism in their comments. I will not repeat all of that piece as you can check the link above if you really care to learn but I will make a specific point.

Of the many Zionist accusations, the one I find most ridiculous is the one where I am apparently 'playing to a Muslim audience.' It shows the ignorance and idiocy of my Zionist accusers who see a brown woman with an exotic name and assume she must be a Muslim. So for the record, let me repeat what I wrote to the Islamist nut-jobs way back when and redirect it to my Zionist accusers (Aside: hilarious how Anton Block's narcissism of minor differences applies so well to both):

As a Hindu, I grew up in a household where books were kissed (like Rushdie's household). But more importantly, I also grew up in a home where pens, notebooks, and more recently - with typically Hindu logic – laptops are worshipped. Every year on Diwali, you see, we are required to offer prayers to Durga – the goddess of war – and to our weapons that she is believed to embody and inhabit. In my childhood, my family would clean and polish old swords, spears, revolvers and rifles on every Diwali. And at midnight, these weapons would be placed on the altar and anointed with kumkum, turmeric, ghee. We would conduct an aarti, the polished metal of the weapons gleaming through the fragrant smoke of diyas and agarbattis.

While I was still a child, my grandmother began the tradition of placing our schoolbooks and pens on the altar instead of weapons. She said that in the coming world, these would be our weapons. That tradition endures and to this day, I place my laptop, even draft manuscripts, on the altar on Diwali. It is a tradition I plan to uphold and live for the rest of my life.

The point I am making is simple: keep those threats and hate mails coming!

I am not about to back down from saying what I believe. And I am not about to back down from fighting for what I believe. And I am not – like some writers – about to “self-censor” my writing because some pathetic, cowardly, creature out there may be offended.

This is not about Rushdie or Mistry or Atzmon! This is about my right to words, stories, opinions. And I will be damned if I let go of those without a fight!

A final point to note: fanatics are not only to be found on all ends of the spectrum, but they also show the same lack of imagination when it comes to the depth of their arguments. Good to know that there is a meeting point for fanatics of all ilk somewhere even though its marked by an acute absence of intelligence and imagination.

Lessons Learned and Unlearned: 9/11 Ten Years Later

2011-09-11T16:26:00.001+01:00

Ten years ago, I spent most of the September 11, scratching my head and trying to figure out how the assassination of the "Lion of Panjshir," Ahmad Shah Massoud would impact Afghanistan, and by extension, India. Massoud had been assassinated two days before, and suddenly it seemed that Pakistan-backed Taliban were not only unstoppable but unbeatable.

I spoke that day to a friend, an Afghan refugee who worked on mental health issues for young children, trying to apply his education from Delhi University to people in the refugee camps in India. At twenty-five, his homeland etched in his memory, yet his upbringing firmly done in north India, he would often hum Manna Dey's famous song, eliding both his longing for Afghanistan and his love for Bollywood in one go. On September 11, 2001, I remember his desperation at Massoud's killing. "It is over. It is lost. We will never return."

Yet a few hours later, things had changed dramatically. All the channels had the same image of the airplanes flying into the Twin Towers. Although the myriad emotions continued to play havoc in my mind for a very long time (and inspired - and were worked out in - my second novel, With Krishna's Eyes), after those first anxious hours of phoning and locating friends and family, a ritual that follows terrorist attacks that we in India were already so accustomed to, and that the Americans learned on that bright September day, my focus turned back to figuring out the impact of the attacks.

The impact on America appeared clear: even in my years of living there, I had noticed a propensity to extreme positions, with little understanding of the long term consequences. In my twenties, and still a history buff, I had ascribed this American trait to a lack of historic grounding: most other nations have lived through - and more importantly - survived multiple depredations of war, famine, disease. Most of us, around the world, have embedded cultural memories, if that is not too much of a shorthand, of the possibilities of utter destruction; we take moments of peace and calm as anomalies, luxurious ones, but still rare and to be cherished. The US, on the other hand, has had a nearly charmed national life. Despite the hiccups of history, it seems to have eluded the travails that time brings to nations. Until of course you consider that five hundred years are merely a blink of an eye in time.

After 9/11, it was inevitable that US would go to war, all guns blazing. That in itself was a game-changer for Afghanistan. More importantly, for me, considering the impact of the attacks in New Delhi, the American urge for war would also be a huge game-changer for Pakistan. What, of course, I could not foresee, on that evening of September 11, was the USA's idiotic and entirely self-defeating military action in Iraq.

And perhaps that is the other, unintended consequence of 9/11 that needs to be considered. USA obviously learnt no lesson, except that having achieved predictable sympathy for its military action against the Taliban, it grew quickly drunk on its own might and victim narratology, gave up all veneer of being anything but the newest avatar of imperialism. L'roi est mort, vive l'roi indeed!

Over a year later, as the American drums of war grew louder, the reports of swift but clear erosions of its democratic principles at home and international conventions abroad grew louder, I found myself in a long discussion with a motley group of journalist and analyst friends about USA's apparently unchecked and growing hegemony and the policies India needed to adopt to deal with it.

Since mid-90s as the impact of climate change has become apparent, I have argued that India's greatest challenge in the 21st century shall be an impending refugee crisis as increasing amounts of Bangladesh's low lying lands are swallowed by a rising sea. I have seen this as a creeping issue, reaching catastrophic proportions towards the middle of the century. (An aside: having consistently analysed Pakistan's nuclear capacities in the past twenty years, I have always believed that India could - in the worst case scenario - suffer a devastating but not a mortal blow. The consequences of such a blow for Pakistan however would be fatal. And this is a completely political, military analysis not an emotional, human one). However, with the changed global scenario in the aftermath of 911, and the increasing numbers of American projects gaming the break up of Pakistan, I found myself altering the factors, geographically and chronologically.

Even in 2002, it was apparent that Pakistan was rapidly heading towards failure as a state, with a potential break up. The erosion of Saudi Arabia's influence is a given, with the only crucial point being the time scale. It has neither a sustainable economy nor a clear model of human development that can replace its oil-based politico-economic influence in the future. At the same time, despite Pakistan's many apologists in the US, mostly Americans who had benefited from the Afghan-Soviet war, the writing has been clear on the wall. This artificial buffer state as discussed in details in the Mountbatten papers, declassified by UK at the start of the millennium, has little to sustain it. The issue is not if Pakistan will splinter, but when and how. For India - at the risk of sounding cold - the issue is not of dealing with Pakistan until that date, but working out a strategy for containing the fall out when the inevitable occurs.

While our politicians will meekly declare that "a strong, stable Pakistan is in India's interest," few will go further. The splintering of the state would not only create issues of nuclear weapons falling into hands of various rogue non-state elements (see aside above), but also create a major humanitarian catastrophe. Fact still remains that we abut Pakistan's longest and most accessible border. Can we honestly say we will be able to turn away millions of clamouring civilians fleeing unimaginable violence, hunger and other travails, when Pakistan falls apart? Will we be able to withstand the enormous international pressure brought to bear upon us? And worse still, how would we cope with admitting millions of a people raised in what is mostly a dictatorship, mostly illiterate and brainwashed for three or more generations to hate everything about India? At the very least, we would have to write off all chances of seeing a "shining India" in any shape or form for many decades.

I still hold by this scenario that I sketched out at that discussion nearly ten years ago. The only change I make to it is this: our analysts and policy-makers are still avoiding all thought of it even as the date for facing this challenge grows ever closer, ever faster. But there are other consequences of that September attack on the US, most unforeseen and not all devoid of hope and grim.

The "Arab Spring" is clearly on the way to disproving the myth of the global ummah as a monolith. As political aspirations drive major changes in the West Asia and North Africa, identities other than religious ones are occupying their rightful space in the political imaginary. This shattering of the simplistic myth of a monolithic global Muslim identity, one that has often meant that bulk of Indian Muslims have been seen as traitors to the Islamist cause by jihadist groups (and yet suspected of secret sympathy by far too many both in India and abroad), is also one that is backfiring on Pakistan. With Saudi Arabia demanding that Pakistan pay the piper with its own troops, Bahrain using Pakistani mercenaries to suppress its own populace, and other countries in the region discovering that religion alone is no foundation for political aspirations (a lesson that we all should have learned in 1971) means long-standing political disputes - internal and external - will need to be negotiated and discussed on different parameters.

The splintering of this monolith shall be most painful for Pakistan. As General Zia once quipped (and I paraphrase): If Turkey stopped being Muslim, it would still be Turkey; if Egypt stopped being Muslim, it would still be Egypt; but without Islam, Pakistan will just be India. The dangers of constructing an artificial national identity based solely on religion, and by exclusion of all else, have never been clearer!

Nowhere is this more important - for India at least - as in the case of Kashmir. In the past ten years, India has benefited from USA's wars with foreign jihadis ignoring the region to fight elsewhere. Just the figures on ex-filtration of jihadis from Kashmir since 9/11 are evidence of this. This ex-filtration has contributed to the diminishing influence of the Kashmir separatists: each call for bandh has been less likely to be enforced with violence and therefore less likely to succeed; as fear diminishes, voter turn outs have improved and political engagement increases. However, much remains to be done, mostly by the Indian state and polity: a strengthened human rights commission (like the one that produced the recent report on the unidentified graves) is a good start, as is the Truth and Reconciliation Commission proposed by Omar Abdullah. Other steps need to be taken at centre and state levels which will be discussed in a different post (too many and too long for this one). However one thing is clear: Kashmir ought to be, now and in future, off the agenda for any talks with Pakistan, or indeed elsewhere. There is no point "negotiating" a resolution with a state teetering on failure,and one that would likely cease to exist in the foreseeable future.

Fortunately, the above two factors - a failing Pakistan and the long term consequences (still many unseen but hinted clearly) of the "Arab Spring" - also point to one last point: it is time for India to grow out of its narrative of Partition. As identities other than religion come to fore, it is time for India to recognise that we need not be held hostage to the narratives of the past century. No where is this more obvious than in Kashmir which ought to be treated as another part of the nation-state and not in quick repeats as a spoilt child, a hostage, or a symbol of the success of our non-religious national identity. As changes sweep through West Asia and North Africa, the urge and need for victim narratives for Islam as well as the efficacies of usual red flags is being steadily eroded.

This provides us - India - a clear opportunity of forging a new national narrative that can move beyond simplistic Hindu-Muslim binaries. The internal political and economic impact of this can be extraordinary, while building on our long standing tradition of secularist polity. Moreover, this realisation can help us re-forge earlier external links, formulate clearer foreign policy towards West Asia and north Africa, one based on mutual interests and not the fear of an imaginary fifth column within. This also would mean recalibrating our relationships with many nations around the globe, to our own advantage. (Again, too many steps and ideas on this but will write another post soon).

Ten years ago, there a fold in history that impacted all of us. Although much violence and sorrow has followed, it also opened up a moment of extraordinary opportunity, especially for us in India. If we can sieze it, then when history is recorded, not too many decades in the future, the ghost of Partition would be seen to have been laid to rest on a bright September morning in New York.

On Independence Day: Happy Birthday India!

2011-08-15T11:29:00.002+01:00

As some of you know, I have been slowly migrating my old blog posts from sawf.org to this blog. Rather aptly, today I found this post from 2001, written about my father's retirement from a life-time of serving in various branches of the government. I have added some updates at the end. Happy Independence day!

August 15, 2001: This Independence Day, I have a confession to make: I get tears in my eyes every time I see the tricolour flutter against the sky. I also get teary eyed when I see young Indian men in uniform, and when I hear the first strains of Vande Mataram. Of course, I swell up bigger than a balloon with pride at the same time. Of course, I understand that this form of sentimental patriotism is not considered "cool" by many. It is not nearly as fashionable as mehndi, tattoos and pierced noses that epitomize "Indian" chic these days. But, let me tell you, it is a lot harder to maintain.

India is not an easy country to love. Our politicians are a joke; our courts are a travesty; and the bureaucrats are equal to the most heinous form of torture imaginable. The "system", that all of us love to blame, ensures that all of us are pulverized into submission by a steady, daily, grind. Try getting a child into a half-decent school and you'll realise how omnipotent the "system" is. The parents are put to test, not the child. In fact, the child's intelligence, energy, talent count for nothing even in the so-called "progressive" schools. What counts is the parent's position and their bank balance. Or try getting a complaint registered at the police station. From chain-snatching to domestic violence to murder; you'll feel that the cops are doing you a favour by hearing you out.

In fact, even death is a fairly humiliating business in the country, since the doctor signing the death certificate, the police constables, the morgue, all want a "cut" from the family to "expedite" the matters.

So why the hell do I get teary eyed at the sight of the tricolour? Well, I have a story for you: Back in 1961, a young man from Allahabad University joined the defense forces. On the first day of training, he found a sign - a fairly common one around most cantonments in India - that said: "Watan ki izzat, unit ki izzat, apni izzat." (Country's honour, unit's honour, your honour). Unlike many people, that twenty-year-old believed the words and decided to live by them.

In the ensuing years, he served the country in two wars and countless special operations. He received no decorations, no special medals or awards. Instead, he chose to become one of the "unsung" ones, who would do the work but could never receive the credit. As he grew older, his willingness to serve the country took him to foreign lands and to tougher assignments. And to many disappointments. He learned that the most powerful enemies of the country are those who profess to serve it: the bureaucrats who put personal interests before the nation's; senior officers who care more for the petty loyalties to their particular branch of service; the journalists who care more for the story than for the lives of those who defend the country; the academics who sell their integrity for an invitation to attend an overseas conference.

I often wonder how that man coped with such disappointment? How could he continue speaking up, drawing the line, practising patriotism day after day, when he was penalized for it by his own people? How could he bear to carry on, paying the price - daily - for his integrity, his dedication? How could he preserve his patriotism in face of daily pummeling of his ideals for so many years? I asked him that recently, mostly because of the anger I felt on his behalf.

His reply was sanguine, calm, self-assured: "This country has always had 90% asses and 10% horses. The horses ensure that the country continues forward when the asses would drag it backwards. And a horse's job is simply to run."

Independence Day 2001 shall be the first in forty years that this man will see as a civilian. He will watch the ceremonies on TV and not stand at attention to watch the tricolour unfurl above him. And watching him keep the faith, I promise that for just one day of the year, I will not threaten to immigrate to a country that is easier to love. More importantly, that I will try to keep the faith for at least as long as he has.

Easy philosophy perhaps, but it didn't take away the bitterness I felt for all that had been denied him by "the system." He didn't seem to mind as much. He explained, "I didn't look for payments for my loyalty. And as far as not receiving what was due to me, no patriot ever does. Haven't you learned anything from history?"

You see, that unsung hero, who is hanging up his boots, is my father. And he is a constant reminder of the sacrifices my ancestors have made for this land. He is also the reason that I cry at the sight of my tricolour.

But I feel proud for a different reason: My father is not alone. Every where I turn, in civilian clothing and uniform, in software development firms and the rice fields, in all parts of the country (no matter how strife torn the region may seem), there are innumerable others exactly like my father. These are the unsung heroes who give everything to the country and ask for nothing in return.

And you know something else that gives me hope? Even 10% of one billion people is one hell of a lot of patriots. Happy Independence Day.

August 15, 2011: Updates: I still get teary-eyed at the sight of our flag and our soldiers. My father is happily retired, and now serving, not the government of India but the country with his many social welfare and upliftment activities which include haranguing politicians and bureaucrats out of their complacency and into acting. Both my parents also spend a lot of time educating neighbours, friends, absolute strangers on basics of civic responsibility. Sometime that makes me worry about their safety, but over all, I am proud that they stand up for the "aam aadmi" (although they do shamelessly use the privilege bestowed by their age and grey hair to do so). As the adage goes, "all that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing." And that is never an option.

In the past ten years, India has become "chic," with our growing economic strength and concurrent global changes. Yet many of the systemic problems remain. Yet I remain optimistic, perhaps more than ever. India has never been one for cataclysmic revolutions, but slow, deep-rooted yet gradual change. And those are more visible each day, especially for those of us who have clear memories of how far we've come. Is the journey over? Not by a long shot! Have we gotten as far as we could have? No! But the dynamism, hope, the "buzz" on every street corner of India is evidence that we are - clamorously, with many arguments, many sulks, dharnas, step backs, and optimism - are still heading in the right direction. It is true that our journey is all too often despite the state, and often in face of great obstacles set up by our political class, but "bottom-up" change is always more enduring than a "top down" solution. And that gives me hope.

Finally, I have not emigrated after all. Globalisation and India have conspired well to create a whole new class of Indian expats, those who work, live, study abroad with no intention of cutting our ties with home. I am one of them, and despite the small hassles of travelling the world with that blue passport, I am not giving up mine!

Happy Independence Day.

Note: My father has received decorations for his military service. However for most of his life, he was an intelligence officer. And in another blog post in the future, I promise to make a case for reforming and strengthening our intelligence sector. But that is for another day.

London Riots: An Alternative 'Larger Context'

2011-08-09T16:01:00.001+01:00

For the past three days, I have watched gangs of criminals run wild in the city that I have chosen for my home. Distressing reports of looting, arson, random violence have filled tv screens and newspapers and social media. In these three days, I have grown angrier and sadder with every news update. And no, these are not easy - oh my poor city - emotions. As a history buff, I know London has a long tradition of erupting into violence with alarming regularity, although these are thankfully brief and infrequent. My anger is rooted in my own observations and while there will be another chance to examine and analyse these more cogently, I want to attempt to articulate some of my thoughts so far:

This spate of rioting has exposed the hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy of the self-professed liberals in this country. For the past year, Labour and its acolytes have loudly and publicly made the case that the Tory budget cuts (always de-linked from earlier economic policy) are to blame for anything and everything. When the student protests turned to disorder earlier in the year, Labour supporters vociferously argued that "direct action" was desirable, even admirable, even if it meant defacing our own city and despoiling our own neighbourhoods. In that same period, Lib-Dems, ever spineless, have been trying to walk both sides of the line, by alternating between condemnation of hooliganism and whining about the 'cuts.' Of course, how we are supposed to pay for an all encompassing social welfare state when most western economies are verging on bankruptcy and all parties agree that cuts are necessary is never something these hypocrite politicians, academics and experts care to point out. But these riots are not about the cuts, or indeed the government as far too many tv interviews with looters have demonstrated.

There is of course a larger context to the current violence. And no, unlike this piece - unsurprisingly in the Guardian - this is also not about the cuts or simplistic policing issues. This larger context is about a generation brought up to believe that the world owes them everything: Nike shoes, HD flat screen televisions, but also good grades, jobs, and oh yes, the recently bandied about word, "a future" without ever having to actually plan or work for it themselves. Yes, I am not just referring to the council estate 'alienated' youth but the larger contemporary reality in many parts of this country.

This is the point David Cameron made - and has been consistently ridiculed for - many years ago: kids in India and China are not just "aspirational" but also realise they need to work hard to get anything they want. So despite being sneered at by the Guardian readers for their 'materialism' and reviled in the Daily Mail for taking away British jobs, kids beyond European Union are working for a future and it may well come at the price of 'the future' in places like the UK. Of course, instead of facing up to the challenge, UK like many other western economies, throwing away its future precisely because children here are not being raised to think in similar competitive terms.

And before you start pointing to Oxbridge, look again. Despite the obvious advantages, many of those same graduates are unable to compete in a work environment that may require long hours and tough schedules. Earlier in the year, Ratan Tata was slammed for criticising UK's work ethic, although for the record, he wasn't talking about his workers but his managers! Yet I have heard the same complaint from most non-EU employers: employees don't care to put together a professional cv, can't be bothered to turn up on time for a job interview, who are either ill or depressed or otherwise 'engaged.' On the other hand, I have had British friends pass me tips on how to skip work - including one who memorably suggested I burst into tears in my GP's office so I could be given time off for 'stress and depression.' Oh and she happens to be a Russell Group graduate with impeccably middle-class Labour voting lineage!

Let us try to imagine how all this entitlement and fecklessness trickles down to the underprivileged in this country: a sense of entitlement that the state should not only pay for their necessities but also their luxuries; a lack of respect of any authority, although here they may well be justified when they constantly told by their own political leaders (Diane Abbott and David Lammy are good immediate examples) that it is everyone else's fault but their own, and thus must be resolved by others and not by themselves. I wouldn't respect such political leaders either. Yet this disrespect extends to teachers, policemen, doctors, even older citizens on the street!

Unfortunately, this 'larger context' also includes self-professed experts and academics who consistently feed a volatile mix of entitlement and dis-empowerment. Regardless of good intentions that drive many commentators to blame the crime and recent riots on poverty and alienation, few seem to realise that their comments are patronising and condescending. Their implicit message is that the poor have no agency in choosing their actions, nor any responsibility for them. As a result, instead of being asked to take responsibility, the feral thugs running around London for the past three days have been aided and abetted by misplaced sympathy and patronisation.

To be highlighted in this 'larger context' is a lack of personal responsibility, not only amongst those who have been torching and looting London but amongst their apparently middle-class muddle-headed enablers, both in the mainstream and social media. Never have I faced such difficulty in compiling basic information about a news incident: Mumbai during the Taj attacks and subsequent bombings, Egypt and Tunisia during their uprising, revolutions in Syria, Libya and Bahrain today, and even Kabul during the constant low-level nonstate violence all seem to spawn a host of measured, responsible professional and citizen journalists. In a Twitter exchange late last night, after unending series of hoaxes about London riots had been floated, a few of us from five different countries discussed precisely this. Just as too many mainstream journalists seemed to be harbouring fantasies of covering the Libyan war or the Brixton riots (at the very least), far too many social media inhabitants have been gleefully stoking panic and hysteria.

After hours of "Regents Park zoo broken into," "tiger loose in west London" and "London Eye on fire" hysteria, I could only think: Give me Mumbai or Cairo or Benghazi any day! At least its citizens care enough for themselves and their habitat to not desperately want to wreck it.

There is a bigger civic - and indeed - policing angle to this madness. Twitter, SMS, Facebook, have been hysterically reporting incidents where there aren't any, ensuring that anyone monitoring the situation would be constantly led astray. While leading police astray may seem like a laudable goal to some 'anarchist' sitting cosy at home, it merely added to the misinformation and most likely contributed to delayed responses by emergency services: if the cops were spread thin, were they following irresponsible leads to nonexistent incidents?

Weirdly enough, there was almost no clear citizen reporting on the actual, and indeed biggest, incidents. And of course the various "incident maps" on various news sites did little to clarify the situation: a gang of kids running through the streets and blocked instantly by police was reported in the same breath as a major fire or looting attempt.

I suppose this brings me to the final point of this rant: the instant gratification culture that - according to some experts - has fuelled the looters also has another, dark albeit more privileged side. Calls for leaders to show up in TV studios demonstrates a media and population that needs to consume its sound bites with frequent, bite size regularity. Surely in a wired world where illiterate thugs can organise riots across the capital, a government can coordinate without physically occupying a central London office or standing before Number 10 Downing every half hour to provide a 'statement'? As a friend pointed out: for all the comparisons to Churchill, today's media and Britain would have not only clamoured for more frequent statements but also been furious that the D-Day landing took more than five seconds and sit-rep statements did not come rapidly enough! London may have the Blitz spirit, its mainstream media sure as hell does not!

Perhaps this 'alternative larger context' will offend many readers. But I go back to another summer day, in July 2005, when I decided to move to London. The city then still reeled in the aftermath of the 7/7 bombings but I was met with nothing but friendly smiles, professionalism and great civility. It was that calm politeness - ureported, uncommented in the mainstream media of course - that convinced me to move here. Even though the past three days have been full of anger and sadness, I will continue to focus on that same elusive, yet ever present, sense of self-reliance, community solidarity and enterprise that attracted me here. Thankfully, in London there has been much of it on display, and from every skin colour, religion and background possible.

Thank you Londoners, just for that!

Still Angry at the Hoax. And It is Not Just About Amina

2011-06-15T22:04:00.002+01:00

Days after the Amina hoax came to light, and despite the reams of virtual ink wasted by the media on the story, I have found myself feeling furious each time I think of the way the story unfolded.

I got news of the story when it suddenly showed up on my twitter feed, with various activists and journalists being informed that “Amina” had possibly been abducted by Syrian security forces. I re-tweeted the initial abduction tweet and then checked the blog in question. And that is where things got messy!

While I am no Syria expert, I noticed some odd details, none of which made the story impossible but did stand out as improbable: “Amina” seemed to have a close, very physically affectionate relationship with her father, with a level of intimacy that seemed unusual. Perhaps, this was the Indian in me – and we share quite a few cultural traits with west Asian cultures – but the idea of a father writing on his daughter’s body – even if it were identifying details to prepare for a demonstration – seemed somehow culturally implausible. Similarly, the idea of any father standing up to state security in a totalitarian state with impunity seemed fanciful.

The third and to me, most telling detail, was the lack of access and information “Amina” had to and about feminine cultural spaces. Regardless of sexuality, and very much like India, most west Asian cultures continue to have numerous, intimate, powerful communal spaces for women. In fact, as a teenager and young adult in New York and Boston, I had experienced this lack of shared feminine spaces as a distressing albeit hard to articulate aspect of culture shock. I still find myself seeking these in Europe, and often find them amongst friends from Africa and Asia, instead of amongst European or American women. As a result “Amina’s” lack of access to women and indeed, her lack of relationship with any women (even her mother) except lovers baffled me.

However, perhaps my own prejudices came through as I decided that these discrepancies were a result of “Amina’s” bi-national identity. Perhaps, I told myself, she was too American, much like the “diaspora” kids we see in India who have little understanding or knowledge of cultural codes. This sense was heightened as some of the posts reminded me of the old French “harem” paintings, recognisable and yet somehow indefinably fantastic.

Yet I felt also guilty in doubting someone I knew little about. Perhaps it is a measure of my own location – from a former colony, with extensive personal experience as a racially marginalised other in many western countries – that I felt upset by my own doubts. Accustomed to having my own experience and knowledge doubted and questioned on a regular basis by self-proclaimed “western,” “liberal,” generally white and male experts of India, and especially as I do not fit their accepted colonially-rooted stereotypes of a woman of colour, I felt acutely disloyal at doubting one of the sorority on such grounds.

And here again, is the continuing tragedy of our pasts: the powerful feel no need to question their lack of knowledge; while the historically dis-empowered and marginalised are hesitant to assert what we know to be true!

I also felt particularly hesitant in pointing this out as any doubts expressed about “Amina’s” identity were quickly shouted down on social media. A telling discrepancy showed up here: Arab bloggers and tweeple who were the first to express their doubts were shouted down by “Amina” supporters from Europe and north America. Those doubting her accounts, despite their greater knowledge of the Syrian culture and politics (and great potential risk to themselves as they looked for this fictional heroine in Assad’s prisons) were branded “homophobic” by primarily white liberal supporters from Europe and

America

. Ugly prejudices of race trumped any kinship on sexuality, just as feminism(s) of women of colour has been clipped by white middle-class female condescension for decades past!

Soon after the initial look at her blog, I stepped out of that debate, mostly refusing to comment or re-tweet the hysteria that built around the story. Still, I followed the story, all the while plagued by doubts: had this young woman built so many layers of anonymity that she could not be located? Were the cultural discrepancies intentional as part of the exercise of hiding from authorities? That perhaps she was indeed suffering in some prison and I was being unfair?

And perhaps this is what continues to make me angry about the Amina Hoax: First, the apparently “new and equal” world of social media replicated the ancient colonialist dynamic of first, locating a cultural informer who fit “western” criteria of acceptability based on what should be long-discarded cultural stereotypes; second, other reliable cultural voices were doubted and drowned out as they neither pandered to nor fit the stereoptype of the reliable cultural informer; and finally, although many from the region (most notably Electronic Intifada) were involved in debunking the hoax, it finally needed western (and white) journalists to provide the weight of credibility to the debunking!

While Macmaster is a rather common example of a particularly reprehensible brand of ideologue and activist, the wider issues mentioned above are far more disturbing as they is go far beyond this particular hoax.

Edward Said’s daughter Najla Said said her father would think the hoaxer “Tom MacMaster a perfect example of Orientalism itself.” I can not but agree! This works on two levels: first, there is little doubt that Macmaster feels he could portray the “subaltern other” better than she could himself, and indeed, shows little remorse or any moral compunction in self-righteously appropriating a trebly marginalised voice – that of a lesbian woman in Syria – despite or indeed perhaps because of his status as a privileged white straight man!

Second, much of the western media – as spiked has point out – actively colluded in the marginalisation of other voices and privileging “Amina’s” over them simply because she confirmed their own prejudices and agendas. (Here, hats off to the handful of dedicated journalists who first debunked the story and have since refused to insert themselves into the story as heroes!)

While spiked does not mention the imbalance of power linked to race and ethnicity at the heart of the current hoax, this is worth considering. Much of western discourse about the other continues to be filtered through a series of approved cultural informants, who are chosen not for their accuracy or veracity but for their ability to continuously re-affirm the accepted narratives about the “other.”

A look at a whole range of news stories, novels, films all point to this. The “immigrant” novel, the breathlessly narrated “behind the veil” accounts, the “save the natives from themselves” movies, all contain one or both of the following: a white authoritative privileged narrator whose race alone confers veracity to the account; and/or native informers whose veracity is conferred not by their own ability or story but because of a the white male narrator’s acceptance of it.

It was this dynamic that Macmaster embodies and exploited. Sadly enough, much of the US and EU mainstream and social media actively participated in his game, and continues to do so.

Are We Really Secular: Revisiting a Blog post from 2002

2011-06-07T20:48:00.000+01:00

This is a piece originally posted for www.sawf.org on April 15, 2002. I have been slowly migrating some of the old pieces to this blog and felt this was a useful reminder, especially as the Congress appears to be playing its usual "secular" card instead of addressing the pressing political, economic and governance issues. Some of the players are the same; what is different is the country. Moreover, the Mumbai attacks saw a shift amongst the self-avowed Muslim leadership in much of the country (although not amongst the Congress and Abdullah family members). And that is a good sign...for the future.

Are We Really Secular?

Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee recently made a highly publicised visit to the riot-torn state of Gujarat. He visited the temporary camps where riot victims are being housed, and the violence hit neighbourhoods. With great sensitivity, he spoke of the "shame" the riots had brought to India, and how he would not be able to travel overseas because of that shame. Wiping his eyes, he also spoke at length of the need to protect the minorities.

Then he visited Godhra, the site of the train massacre that sparked off the current violence. And there, Vajpayee did not speak of the shame of such violence. He didn't visit the firefighters who were prevented from reaching the flames and putting them out. He never found out that the same firefighters are receiving daily death-threats for simply doing their jobs. He also didn't speak to any of the families of those who were killed in the massacre. Many in India - including me - wondered why he didn't feel "shame" at the carnage in Godhra, or at the killing of Hindus and Sikhs in Jammu and Kashmir.

What I am about to write now will be immediately open to charges of "communalism," and yet it must be said. Not for the sake of political games that all the parties are playing, not for the sake of creating more disturbances and riots. But simply for the longer-term benefit of the entire nation: Secularism is one of the greatest principles enshrined in our constitution. It enables a citizen to follow his/her conscience, enables us to pray, believe and live as our own intellect and faith directs us. Yet on a social and political level, secularism is practised more as a convenient method of wooing minority votes.

This means that all political parties and far too many of our "thinking" classes are more interested in minority-ism instead of true secularism. Just a quick look over the events of the past month will show this.

[1] In most of the media (both English media in India and international) the massacre of women and children was passed off as a logical conclusion of "inciting" Muslim anger. One of the leading commentators even explained that by travelling to Ayodhya, chanting "Jai Shree Ram," and thus being "fanatic Hindus", the 58 women and children had invited the wrath of Muslims.

Since when is speech considered sufficient incitement to kill in a democracy? What if a fanatic Hindu used the same argument as defense to kill Muslims, based on the call for namaaz five times a day? Such verbal and logical sophistry simply opens the doors to doom. It also belittles the tragedy that befell not only a small group of people but also the nation at Godhra.

The press also played an interesting role in partisan propaganda. An anonymous email was sent around the world within the hour of the Godhra attack explaining that the "kidnapping" of a Muslim girl by the ramsevaks had led to the massacre. She had, according to the email, been held in the doomed train carriage. No press member - international or Indian - cared to wonder how a group of families travelling with women and children would "kidnap a young girl" and hold her (apparently for rape and worse) in a train carriage full of their family members. No one in the press cared to question the veracity of the mail - until Prem Shankar Jha in Outlook! And the canard did rounds as absolute proven truth. And of course, it now emerges that there was no kidnapping, no girl, and no other "incitement" for the killing.

[2] Of course, in part the current round of violence can be blamed on political parties who have been too keen on proving their "secular" (read minority-ist) credentials. When Sonia Gandhi led a delegation of opposition leaders to the president to protest the riots in Gujarat, I wondered why she or other leaders had not bothered to condemn or even comment on the Godhra tragedy. For nearly forty-eight hours after the attack on the train, no major leader from any national party or the Muslim community had come forward to condemn the attack. Shabana Azmi, Javed Akhtar and their ilk who hog the cameras at every given opportunity didn't care to condemn the attack. And of course, Imam Bukhari, Syed Shahabbuddin, and the Abdullah duo of father and son had suddenly found camera-silence to be a wondrous new phenomenon.

Similarly, the recent attack on the Raghunath Temple in Jammu and Kashmir by terrorists was explained away by secularists as "the temple was not the target." They never explained what the "target" was. This attack of course came after nearly two months of repeatedly foiled terrorist attempts to reach the shrine of Vaishno Devi. Yet, no leader has condemned the attack or criticized it. Interestingly enough, the English media has made practically no mention of these attempts, perhaps in the interest of maintaining "peace."

More than anything else, this silence has led to the anger that to date simmers not only in Gujarat but elsewhere in India. And it grows every day. It is this latent anger within the Hindus that must be discussed and dealt with, not simply written off as some "lunatic fringe" phenomenon.

[3] This majoritarian frustration and anger is also growing due to irresponsible statements from Muslim leaders, statements that go either unchecked or un-critiqued, and often even explained away, by our self-proclaimed secularists. A Muslim Member of Parliament warned that Muslims would soon want their own separate homeland, perhaps having forgotten that they already have done so once. No other MP protested the statement. Neither did the press or the secular "intelligentsia." At the start of the 1990s, the head of Aligarh Muslim University's student union, had announced that there was no question of handing the structure at Ayodhya to the Hindus. "They have thousands of gods. Today they want a temple for Ram, tomorrow it will be for another god." (this statement loses a great of deal of the intended disrespect in translation). Yet that was considered a "secular" statement by the smug left-leaning self-declared "liberal" intelligentsia.

Hundreds of thousands of Kashmiri Pandits still shudder to recall Farooq Abdullah's rallies in the late 1980s when he called for a Kashmir "only for Muslims," and warned that the Hindus should leave for their "own safety." He is now the self-professed messiah of the Indian secularists, and routinely criticises outfits like the VHP and calls for their banning. Similarly, when a Muslim leader announces that he does not believe in the supremacy of the Constitution, Indian republic or the flag, he is considered simply a "devout" Muslim. Should a Hindu ever declare the same, he would be immediately branded a "fanatic and anti-national" (both labels are being currently sported by VHP, RSS and the Bajrang Dal, who have never - to date - questioned the integrity or entity of India).

[4] It is this form of discriminatory public discourse that has contributed to the anger seething in many parts of India. Back in the 1950's, Jawaharlal Nehru was warned by his advisors that if he didn't practise an even-handed secularism, there would be a day when the Hindus in India would be radicalised. However, lust for power ensured that Nehru did not accept the recommendations of the report.

And that radicalisation has already begun. The temple issue and the riots in Gujarat are merely early manifestations of this process. Unless, there is some concrete steps taken by the "secular" leadership, this radicalisation will continue unchecked.

So what can be done? Well, we need to work towards a truly secular state, where the rule of law takes precedence over religious norms. And it must be a state where the "law" is applied evenly. That means that what applies to one community must also apply to the rest. The USA is a good example where "Christianity" (in all its denominational variations) continues to be the majority religion, and yet the rule of law takes precedence over the religious ones. Where national symbols are accepted as the highest of all, over and above all religious, ethnic and faith-driven ones. This means a uniform civil code, another bogey raised by the secularists as "communal".

At present, we have a situation where a Supreme Court decision granting Rs. 25 maintenance a month to a destitute Muslim woman is overturned by Parliament, in the interests of "secularism." And yet, the same party who led that move defends the "supremacy" of the court when it comes to a temple in Ayodhya. Similarly, a law requiring legal registration of ALL places of worship, irrespective of religion, is shot down as being intended to "harass minorities," even as the Supreme Court prohibits Hindus from praying on an undisputed piece of land, which is owned and controlled by a Hindu religious trust. Right now, the burning alive of one missionary and his two children is condemned but the burning alive of 58 women and children is considered "justifiable."

Unless such skewed practice of the discourse of "secularism" is stopped, we are looking at many more riots, much more violence for many years to come. And no matter how many poems are recited by tottering old politicians, the anger within the country will not be assuaged by partisan declarations, discourse or decisions. In the past month, this has become painfully clear.

Another thing has become painfully clear (although perhaps not to the political leadership of the country, given recent state and municipal election results): The upper echelons of the political leadership have no idea about the way people think. Perhaps we need another Prime Minister who would hang his head in shame not only when the dead are from a minority community, but simply because the dead are Indians.

We could do with a prime minister who would feel a little shame (just enough to prevent a jaunt overseas) when Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists are ethnically cleansed out of Kashmir. And more importantly, we could do with a prime minister who represents a country where 60% of the people are under the age of 35. Such a leader may have more understanding of one simple, yet brand new reality: much of young India doesn't care what the world thinks and we would like our leaders to instead worry about what we think!

At Godhra, Vajpayee was posed some difficult questions by the representatives of the vernacular press. One local correspondent asked him if along with "minority protection" laws, we needed laws to protect the majority community too. Vajpayee responded rather brusquely that he didn't think that the majority needed protection. The correspondent came back with a question that initially stumped Vajpayee. For once the leader renowned for his wit, could only rely on age-worn cliches and platitudes. The question was simple: "If there is no need for such a law, should we wait for more massacres like that of Godhra?" Of course, the minority community may also ask whether they may look forward to more riots.

Vajpayee should think hard about that question, which articulates much of the discomfort that many in India feel. Are we always going to be fighting each other, or will we ever move towards living together? If the answer is to be the latter, then it is time we began talking to each other, forced our leaders to be more responsible and equitable, or perhaps more drastically, got rid of all of them and got some new ones.

Reminiscing Along with My Dad: A Shared Enterprise

2011-05-07T03:48:00.006+01:00

Some of you may already know that my father maintains a blog of his own, posting his memories and photos. Since Osama bin Laden's elimination, he has been posting on our days in Pakistan.

Disclosure: Dad is one of the longest serving RAW officers at the Indian embassy in Islamabad. And our time as a family there was full of strange moments. Also, that was one of the major hostile postings for the family and was not made easy by the fact that it was an "under-cover" post.

My dad, as always, has been quite discreet about what it meant to serve in Pakistan, but it is safe to say that it was one of the wilder, more adventurous stints for the family.

For an example, let me tell you one tiny story: before my dad was assigned to Islamabad, the family had been happily living in India's north eastern borders. We lived in a bamboo hut with a snake trench around it; our beds were bamboo rafts placed on four living bamboo trees which had to be trimmed every two days to ensure that the bed remained horizontal; and I had a fox fur skin that my father had shot one night that I used for comfort blanket; I was horrified many years later to learn that the fuzzy rag I dragged around and chewed on would sell for thousands of dollars on Fifth Avenue but that is another story. At the age of five, my young sister spoke better Tibetan and Nishi than Hindi.

Point is that I was eleven and my younger sister was five at the point that the government announced that we were moving to - along with my father - to Islamabad. Imagine two kids, one with a wild imagination (me) and another who is convinced that my grandmother's home was the only one in India built of cement and brick (pukka) and everyone "normally" lived in bamboo huts! Suddenly, this crazy family was assigned to go undercover in Pakistan!

Immediately, my parents decided that I was old enough to be relied on to keep the "cover story going." That meant that I could already basically lie through my teeth, and was now actively encouraged to do so. I must be one of the world's very few writers who got their training testing their credibility in real life with real and dangerous consequences!

My sister was too young to understand the concept of a cover story. In fact, she was too young to understand the difference between truth and lie. That made her a liability for the family - which is a pretty awful thing when you are five!

That is when the family came together for one of its weirder ideas! While Dad attended training sessions and briefings at South Block in New Delhi, my mother, I, and various other members of our extended family were entrusted to rewriting my sister's childhood memories.

This meant that we came up with a fictitious identical twin brother (thank god for Bollywood!) for my father - think Ram aur Shyam! Then, an entire life story was constructed for this non-existent brother who was supposed to have migrated to USA after a career in the Indian armed forces. Once this idea was introduced to my young sister's mind, the entire family collaborated to "alter" her memories: events she had experienced with my father were attributed to this fictitious twin; all photographs of my (and her) father in uniform were re-identified as that of her non-existent uncle instead of her father.

Slowly, over six months, all my sister's childhood memories were subtly altered to ensure that she could not identify any photograph of my father in army uniform. On the eve of our journey to Islamabad, my sister not only did not remember that my father had ever worn an army uniform, she also believed that most of the first five years of her life were untrue and a fantasy she had created.

You may ask if we have since regretted this?

Well, we were supposed to do it for the tricolour - like many other awful and strange and bizarre things our family did in the years afterwards - and so we never thought to contradict. And we still believe that tricolour takes precedence on our lives!

You may also ask if my sister is terribly traumatised by this rewriting of her memories: I am sorry to disappoint you dear reader, but I doubt it: my sister is one of the world's leading anti-terror expert and a respectable citizen to boot!

Osama bin Laden: What Next for Pakistan

2011-05-04T20:27:00.001+01:00

Osama bin Laden was killed earlier this week, a result inevitably determined and irrevocably scheduled on 9/11, although there are many who insist he was on USA's radar well before the destruction of the iconic towers; he may well have been, but on that September morning, his fate was ensured. That he was killed in Pakistan, in the heart of the country's military establishment, may surprise the naive but seems equally inevitable to someone who not only spent a few years growing up in General Zia's Islamabad but has followed that country closely in the past two decades.

I do not want to go over again over the numerous bits of rumour, political spin and misinformation about the operation that resulted bin Laden's death. Instead, I want to reflect on some of the country's past and perhaps try to glimpse a bit of its immediate future. And for that I go back to a blistering hot summer day in 1980 when we arrived in that country.

For a family used to the rough living of forward camps in India's north-east (one of our homes was a bamboo hut with dirt floors), Islamabad seemed gleamingly modern: wide avenues that seemed to echo Lutyen's Delhi with more than a dash of scenes from American movies. Rawalpindi and Lahore, however, were similar to crowded, untidy towns from our own side of the border, except that people were either exaggeratedly friendly (something that discomfited me) or erupted into mysterious aggression. Peshawar was chaotic but friendly and once past the Jamrud Fort - where national government writ did not apply - we felt as safe amongst the Pathan warlords as we would in Indian territory.

Strangely, for a country with two of its neighbours engaged in bloody wars (Afghanistan and Iran) through out the 1980s, with seemingly unending train of refugees pouring into its own impoverished villages and towns, Pakistan seemed single-mindedly focussed on one issue: India.

It took a long time for me to understand that India posed an existential threat to Pakistan in a way that war on its other borders could not: cleaved from India, the country desperately needed a national identity that would not only distinguish it clearly from its eastern neighbour but also confirm a sense of self that would not need no reference to India. Unlike most Indians who feel that our shared features are grounds for friendly relations, I learned - thanks to years in Pakistani schools - that those very commonalities threaten the ongoing national project of Pakistani self-hood.

To ensure this distinct identity, General Zia had, not long before, embarked on a national "Islamisation" programme. The extent and impact of this decades-long national programme is perhaps little understood: with ample Saudi financial support, the programme was meant to steadily construct an "Islamic" national identity, replacing the various streams of the faith and ancient local cultural traditions with the austere Wahhabi version imported from the Gulf. Over time (and as 30 years of the programme bear fruit now), army and other government institutions were to be populated by these new "true Muslims," with recruitment, promotions, assignments all geared to ensure the gradual cleansing of the old guard who were seen as weak and non-Islamic (and under the new definition, therefore, un-Pakistani enough).

At the same time, a vast change was brought to the educational curriculum: Pakistan's history was rewritten to highlight its Islamic identity and cleanse it of its Hindu, Buddhist, Jain past. We found a stark example of this at the Takshashila monastery ruins where the government guide insisted that the monks' living quarters were prison cells and the abbotts' rooms - slightly larger than the rest - were the torture and execution chambers. You see, there was no room for Buddhist glory in Zia's newly Islamising nation! None of us who had heard that guide on that day in 1983 were surprised by the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in 2001: Zia's tree was bearing fruit!

Even Urdu - that wondrously hybrid linguistic miracle - suffered the same fate as it was steadily "purified" and words from Sanskrit, Prakrit and other Indic languages were replaced with Arab ones.

What does all this have to do with Osama bin Laden, you may well ask? Well, this was also the time when Pakistan's Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) was increasingly empowered (it had existed since 1948) and with the long-running campaign in Afghanistan - with US support in terms of training and weaponry and Saudi funds - grew in stature. Over time, it also became increasingly strident and a powerful cell within the army, and began to establish itself as a separate centre of power, with vast funds and resources but also able to call on an unofficial cadre of ideologically driven footsoldiers from the jihadist groups it supported, funded, trained and ran. By early 1990s, the ISI was often acting against the wishes and without the knowledge of the main army brass. At this time, army and civilian governments were often all too happy to claim ISI's successes as their own, even as some expressed reservations in private (Benazir Bhutto was one of these). It is also important to note that over time and given its involvement in Afghanistan, the ISI also became far more imbued with fundamentalist ideology than many other parts of the Pakistan state and populace.

However, to believe that the army is some how "liberal" is a mistake: three decades of Zia's "Islamisation" have ensured that it also fully partakes of the fundamentalist ideology. There is, however, a basic difference: Pakistan's army also has impressive economic assets and political power; it also is cognizant of the need for working with the rest of the government - even the much-derided politicians - and is circumspect about maintaining its status quo. This leads the Pakistan army to often make what may seem like "compromises" in the national and international arena, although it must be noted that the institution has been very effective in ensuring that civilians and politicians take the fall for these necessary "compromises." One notable exception to this has been Gen. Musharraf who was eased out with a gentleness that Pakistan's army can only extend to its own.

With this backdrop in mind, it is worth looking back at the past ten years (although the Kargil fiasco is also a factor in these internal power games). Pakistan's army and civilian government have attempted to walk a very fine line: unable to check the ISI-jihadi bloc, it has attempted to maintain a facade of "alliance" with US and others in the post-9/11 "war on terror," while trying to curtail some of ISI's influence. Unfortunately, ISI (and some parts of the larger army) have shown little interest in the longer term, economic and political interests of the nation. Instead, still convinced that it - not geopolitics - defeated Soviet Union with the fabled "death-of-a-thousand-cuts," it believes it can continue unchecked: the various attacks in India, including the 2008 Mumbai ones as well as its continued machinations in Afghanistan and the country's own tribal areas, are an evidence of its convictions.

Sadly, Pakistan's policies of the past thirty years are ripping it apart today: army with its collaborating wing of civilian polity is increasingly facing a network of terrorist groups backed, funded, armed and often manned by direct and indirect members of the ISI. This is one answer to the mystery of who the US informed (and didn't inform) and who all in Pakistan government establishment knew about bin Laden's whereabouts! Given the situation in the country, it is likely that various parts of Pakistan's army, ISI and other goverment agencies knew different bits of information and received varying briefings. Unfortunately for Pakistan (also ultimately for bin Laden), although fortunately for the US, these various Pakistani factions are acting against each other!

So what happens now? Terror attack warnings have already gone out across the world. There is little doubt that various groups ideologically linked to Al-Qaida will attempt to avenge his death. There is also the issue of succession to bin Laden, although he was - at time of his death - more of a symbol than a major leader of any jihadist terrorist group. However, the top spot is now available to whole array of successors and succession wars will mean that each heir-apparent will attempt to stake his claim by staging competitively spectacular attacks.

Another aspect to consider is the timing of the operation: by most reliable accounts suggest that US had suspicions about bin Laden's location at least as far back as 2008. It also appears that they knew "almost certainly" by middle 2010 that he was at Abbottabad. It is worth keeping in mind that operations of this kind require a few months of planning, which means they would only ready by the first quarter of 2011.

However, killing bin Laden would have yielded greater electoral benefit for Barack Obama later in the year, once the campaign had begun to heat up. So why now? Did US fear that bin Laden would be tipped off by one side in Pakistan's internecine rivalry and escape again? But then given that last three presidents have failed, that would hardly have been a major disaster. Or did the US feel it was being rendered irrelevant to the Middle East by the events of the Arab Spring and killing bin Laden would symbolically help them assert a military, if not political, power that most of the world believes is waning? No doubt there shall be more answers in the next few weeks as more information emerges.

However, here are my some of my predictions: in the next eighteen months, we shall see increased violence within Pakistan as the army-civilian establishment goes up against the ISI-jihadi alliance. The former will be attempting to salvage what is possible of the national cause while the latter will not only be driven by revenge but an increasing threat to their very survival (The Arab Spring also impacts financing and support of Islamist groups by regimes who are increasingly fighting fires on their own home-fronts). I do not envy the average Pakistani citizen who will be caught in the cross-fire of this "informal" warfare.

Arab Spring: Shifting Sands, Convulsing History

2011-03-21T13:39:00.001Z

During the Egypt uprising, one reporter after another repeated the same mantra: the barrier of fear had been broken. And yet, once Mubarak stepped down and the media eye moved elsewhere, that mantra has not been heard nearly as often.

However in the month since Mubarak's downfall, there is ample evidence that the barrier of fear has indeed been broken. Along with that loss of fear, other walls have come tumbling down: of shame, false pride, hypocrisy: as Egyptians stormed the offices of secret police, people re-lived their torture, keen to explain and share. They stepped inside torture devices to demonstrate the pain and humiliation they had experienced. Men who had been raped as part of the ritual shaming by secret police spoke of their ordeals, often with heart-breaking humour mingled with awe-inspiring strength. Young women detained, sexually assaulted and tortured by the Egyptian army have recorded and publicized their testimony in the past month, a cultural shift that is nearly cataclysmic in its symbolic and narrative worth: the shame is not of the victims but of the torturers who thought that rape and sexual assault can brand women as whores! This is a courage of no small order!

The barrier of fear has also been broken in other parts of the region: Yemen, Bahrain, Libya, Iraq, even the brutally oppressive Saudi Arabia and Syria are seeing unrest by ordinary people with extraordinary courage. The penalty for demanding basic human dignity by these young protesters is the use of tear gas, nerve gas, and even live ammunition at the demonstrations. Moreover, the regimes are institutionally well-entrenched, identifying the key protesters and leaders, hunting them down, arresting, torturing and killing them beyond the eyes of the cameras. That makes even the reporting of these protests and human rights abuses by the regimes acts of courage that few of us can begin to imagine.

As an aside, and once again, it is important to point to the involvement of women in these movements. And no, none of them fit the western feminist paradigms although they do echo many of the earlier (pre-colonial) traditions of women warriors and leaders in the region itself. They are indicators that it is time for new paradigms, and not only for nonwhite, non-western feminisms!

New paradigms are needed not only for feminism, but also for definitions of statehood, political franchise, strategic relations, political and cultural narratives. We are in the midst of historic times where none of the old models and certainties can hold.

So what next?

It is obvious that the Arab Spring is not about to come to a standstill. Despite media warnings and ponderous, well-paid analysts from big name think-tanks, these movements do not look to be dying down. Yes, Bahrain is being brutally crushed by a combination of sectarian political tactics, Saudi and GCC troops, and the regime's own mercenaries from Sunni majority countries. Yes, Libya has gone into armed conflict and international (some would call it western as if the UNSC resolutions and Gaddafi's killings of civilians never happened) intervention. Yes, Saudi and Syria appear to be brutally suppressing their own uprisings. And yes, Yemen at the time of writing this has lived through a Bloody Friday and moving towards a coup or regime change (only time will tell).

Yet none of the events unfolding fit the currently existing theoretical and political models: Hamas and PL both cracked down on the youth demanding a united Palestinian front. Syrians are out in their thousands to demand change even as Vogue writes glowing articles about the dictator's "democratic" home and fashion plate wife (Hang on to that issue: it will be the equivalent of a praise piece for Marie Antoinette for our times; a true historic artefact!) Morocco's king seems to be trying to outrun the breezes of Arab spring while Oman seems to be veering madly between reform and deep regime freeze. Saudi kingdom has once again tried to buy off its population, a measure that seems almost sure to fail.

However, despite the specificities of history, culture and circumstance, the region is tied by a crucial commonality: the fear of regimes seems to have melted. The youth - often educated, disenfranchised, yet politically focussed, are stepping up to demand all the same privileges many in the western world take for granted: security, rule of law, a voice in their own lives and future, opportunity and human dignity.

Of course, many are facing apparently unsurmountable difficulties: the regimes are heavily armed by western weapons, often supported politically and economically by western powers. Many have deep financial links with the "new global elite" who have little interest in welfare or even fate of the common people. Moreover, for decades, financial and geo-strategic interests have generally trumped human rights. That - I have said before - has been a short-sighted strategy especially on part of the western nations who at least talk of human rights. It is understandably a product of centuries of colonial thinking on part of Europe and by extension the US (and in a limited way, Russia). Now, with the first breeze of Arab Spring, the lacunae in that policy lie exposed.

There is no stopping the change occurring in the region. Although there may be setbacks, brutal crackdowns, even temporary freezes in the uprisings, we stand at the beginning of a long process of historic change. Most importantly, none of it is really controllable by foreign powers, regardless of their financial, political and military interests. Just as Egypt and Tunisia threw off their dictators by themselves, and are continuing to stumble and struggle on the path to political growth on their own, the rest of the countries shall do the same.

An intervention - as in Libya - may be of temporary help but it is necessary to note that even the opposition council there has insisted that they be allowed to make the change for themselves. This is a key factor to keep in mind: assistance will be welcome (as has been the case in Libya) but the old colonialist paradigm of "saving people from themselves" is a long buried ideal.

It is also worth noting that it is not only western states who are unable to grasp, manage and react to these historic shifts. As the UN resolution on Libya demonstrated, India and Brazil are too tied their own postcolonial histories to be able to see into the future. Russia and China have also reverted to knee-jerk "west vs rest" divisions, driven of course by their own business and political interests, although these seem shortsighted.

Unfortunately, in not too far future, all nations will have to choose whether their strategic goals match the new realities emerging in the region. This means emerging powers like Brazil and India will need to decide whether an instinctive anti-western, postcolonial reaction still holds strategic value, or should they attempt to bring their decisions in line with the emerging realities of the region. Both will have to decide whether they want to play postcolonial victims or take their rightful place in the future as political and economic powerhouses, especially as the latter comes with great responsibility.

As Libya shows, international lines are increasingly blurred and the only real way out is to actually LISTEN to the people: this is a lesson not only for the dictators in the region but also the international community that has long listened to dictators, tyrants and tottering monarchies instead of the people.

In the long term, these convulsions of history are unescapable. They will continue - not on media schedules and not for the next few weeks - but into the next couple of decades as historic changes do! At the end, those who put short term interests over long term paradigm shifts will find themselves on the wrong side of history.

What the international community needs to do is to find a fragment of the courage displayed by the common people of the region and just learn to let go of old prejudices and paradigms. It is a brave new world coming our way and while those in the region must live through the convulsions of history at great cost to themselves, the least the rest of us can do is to face them and the changing reality with new models of culture, power, and narratives.

New Short Story Now Out in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

2011-03-12T14:51:00.000Z

Just a very quick note to say that the new issue of the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine carries my short story, The Wait. They have been very sweet and described it as "memorable." I just hope that it helps keep the story of the Indian PoWs who were never returned by Pakistan after the 1971 war in our collective memory.

Do look it up if you have a chance.

Politicians Wasting Parliament (and the taxpayer's) Time: Reposted

2011-03-06T19:42:00.005Z

As part of the ongoing process of salvaging some of my old blog posts from www.sawf.org, I found one that seems particularly apt given the political drama/farce once again unfolding in India. Sadly enough, this post was written in 2001, entire decade ago which makes it even more depressing!

A bit of context: I moved back to India in 1995 after living and working abroad and thus got my first taste of Delhi as a weird mix of a phoren-return (a rarity in those days), a UP-ite and having never lived in the capital. Because of family, friends and work, I got to see the workings of that city and how much of it is based on lies. Media, politicians, business, activists all work hand-in-glove no matter what image they present to the aam-aadmi. The post below was a combination of disgust at what I observed as well as a belief I still hold: that truth shall set us free, that the young people of India are its future, and things can be changed. I repost this not to depress the readers but more as a reminder of how far we still have to go:

2001: Most days when you switch on the TV, you find politicians bickering away at each other. So you can imagine my surprise when I found politicians of various parties in complete harmony, agreeing with each other, supporting each other's arguments, presenting a picture of complete bonhomie.

Of course, if you watch DD's broadcast of parliamentary proceedings (which I do, as a particularly nasty example of reality TV), you would know that such bonhomie isn't quite extraordinary. Seconds after staging dharnas, storming the wells, and screaming themselves hoarse, and moments before the cameras are switched off, the opposition and treasury benches have been spotted backslapping like the best of friends. The surprise, therefore, wasn't that they were all "langotiya yaars" beyond the camera lights, but that they were willing to show it on international and national television.

I suppose, the issue at hand has to held responsible for such a public demonstration of affection. You see, the politicians on TV were all justifying the need for voting a huge pay increase for themselves. And that, we all know, is an issue that cuts across party-lines and unites our political classes ever so much better than a national crisis or calamity.

"We get paid Rs. 4,000 a month," said one MP, "and we are required to maintain two homes, one in the capital and the other in our constituency." This was a particularly favoured explanation for the MP pay increase. Even the younger politicians, ranging from Arun Jaitley to Omar Abdullah came up with the facetious reasoning that "improved pay packages will make MPs more honest." On one show, Renuka Chowdhary, the party-hopping fireball explained that "MPs should be paid at least as much as a Joint Secretary. After all, our children need to go to school too." Touching logic, if only it held water. For three basic reasons:

one, because the official pay package forms a small part of the remunerations, legal and illegal, that MPs receive;
two, because greed has no limit and raising the pay package even up to 12,000 will do little to support the lifestyles adopted by many of our MPs;
and three, because a Joint Secretary is actually required to do some work for the benefit of the nation and people, which MPs never do.

Starting with the first point, the Government of India foots the bills for MPs transport, housing, telephone and other utilities. Party coffers assist with other perks. The government also provides each MP with funds to develop their constituencies, very little of which actually reaches the people it is intended for. Finally, there are a number of other "donations" that MPs receive from private and corporate sources. In ten years of being the Chief Minister of Bihar (a proxy one for some of that time and an MP of the Lok Sabha as well), Laloo Prasad Yadav has amassed wealth that confounds the most ambitious among us. This champion of the "down-trodden" declares that property worth crores of rupees is "inherited" from his ancestors (yes, the very same poverty-stricken ones who suffered for the proverbial do bigha zameen). Ironically enough, Laloo's property today outstrips many folds that of the largest upper-caste zamindarsin the same state.

Even a better case in point is that of Phoolan Devi, who was killed in the very same week as my father retired after a long career with the central government. Her property - self-acquired - is estimated in crores, and all of it has been acquired in the last ten years of her political adventure. Meanwhile, my father - after forty years of honest, honourable, and sometimes dangerous, service to the nation - has little but personal pride to show for his efforts. And lest we forget the argument offered by our MPs, my father earned more money - per month - than the MPs.

Which brings us to the second point: will a three-fold increase in pay really make MPs honest? Living in Delhi has been a real education for me. And the lessons have been simple: most politicians live life King-size, and all checks and balances be damned. Starting with flashy cars, satellite phones, and watches worth a few lakh of rupees, there is hardly an MP who can be said to represent the poorest of the poor in this country. Lavish weddings, iftaar parties and "party meetings" bely the MPs' current claim that they are short of cash. While on the topic, let us not forget the foreign holidays that are paid for by the taxpayer's money (the same taxpayer who - in many cases - cannot afford monthly trips from Delhi to Bhatinda).

Experience shows that larger pay packets do not prevent greed. If that were the case, we would live in a highly simplified, moral utopia. Past fifty years of history show that politicians who cannot be corrupted - ie, Lal Bahadur Shastri, - manage to avoid greed, despite having unlimited riches within their grasp. Others - and the Nehru-Gandhi family is a good example - are corrupted to such a level that no amount of wealth (or tragedy) can sate that ever-burning need for more. After all, as the Hindi proverb says, once the lion tastes human blood, it turns into a man-eater. And that is exactly what has happened to our political classes: easy black money has spurred them on to greater heights of greed and corruption.

Now we get to the final point: what is it that our MPs do for us that we need to pay them more out of the tax payer's pocket? There has been an argument made in the past that India works despite its government. In the past half-decade, and with the help of liberalization, this statement has travelled far toward becoming a fact. India is now slowly moving towards a stage where the government is becoming increasingly superfluous in the daily lives of most of its citizens.

And in part, the politicians themselves are to blame. The bulk of this year's budget session was devoted to clamours of resignation by the opposition instead of informed, rational discussion of the budget proposals. The budget was finally passed with only the most cursory of discussions. During that session, the treasury benches had protested the disruption of parliamentary proceedings.

The current parliamentary session has again seen disruptions of parliamentary proceedings, where the house has been adjourned for hours on end and sometimes, even till the next day. This time, the treasury benches are carrying out the disruptions while the opposition has been protesting such "unparliamentary" behaviour.

And just for the taxpayers' information: each day of the parliament session costs the country approximately 2 crore rupees! And the new proposal for MPs' salary hike will cost the nation approximately 23 crores more every year. The question before the nation is simple: Should we pay these MPs more to stage high cost, low quality tamashas and nautankis?

There is one possible solution: For each day that the parliament is disrupted, the disruptive MPs must be made to pay a fine. After all, if each working day of a parliament session costs 2 crores, it is easy enough to calculate the cost of each wasted minute. And let us fine the party (since these disruptions are pre-planned and sanctioned by the party chiefs) not the individual members.

So if a party's members rush into the well and hold up proceedings for ten minutes, let the responsible party foot the bill for those ten minutes. If the parliament is forced into adjournment by disruptions, let the party foot the bill for the entire day. At the end of the session, let the collected money from these fines go back to the tax-payer. This does not mean handing it back to the exchequer, or development agencies that do little, or even NGOs who may be manipulated by their governmental links. Instead, let the income from this "disruption" fine go into providing across the board income tax relief.

Let our MPs put such a proposal into practice first. Then, perhaps, we can talk about giving them pay raises.

Walk down Lucknow's Memory Lanes: Reposted

2011-03-05T17:08:00.000Z

Thanks to a twitter exchange about Lapata's beautiful post on Lucknow, I was reminded of a long-standing task. I used to write for the apparently suspended www.sawf.org many years ago and have been promising myself that I would salvage some of the posts from there for my own blog. Thanks to the exchange today, I re-post my piece on my memories of Awadh:

In my mind, Lucknow stands for the delicious fragrances of ripening Dussheri mangoes, the subtle flavours of melons and the fragile elegance of chikan work. Of course, Lucknow has a lot more for the tourist, but then I was never a tourist there - my association with the city dates back nearly three decades.

Back in the old days, Lucknow exuded a faint aroma of localized power, layered with the famed adab. Everyone was excruciatingly polite and elders spoke in hushed, horrified, tones of the deteriorating decorum in Vidhan Sabha (State Assembly). And while the Lucknow-wallahs may prefer to forget the presence of the latter in their midst, the building is one of the most interesting examples of Raj architecture. In fact, Lucknow is an architecture-buff's delight. Subtle elegance distinguishes the havelis in Malihabad, the Imambara, the gateways, and the Governor's residence, despite the difference in historical periods and architectural styles. The famous La Martiniere school hearkens back to an era of knife-edged trouser creases and scones with tea, whereas the exquisite turn of the (last) century buildings of the Lucknow University campus would make for a fantastic architectural tour, were they not so sadly decrepit.

While Chowk is the standard tourist spot, Lucknow insiders Lahtoosh Road for the real atmosphere. With old shops selling every possible thing under the sun, the atmosphere is similar to that of Delhi's walled city. Tucked behind a mass of junk, discarded furniture and bicycles, shops enjoy decades of loyal family patronage. Decades ago, Hamid bhai, who sends us lovely biryani on Eid, used to mend my bicycle with the same care that he fixed my uncle's in the decades before then. Now, Hamid bhai's son works under the father's eagle eye on my cousin's motorcycles and my nephew's tricycle. (Updated: It is a measure of changes in India in the past decades that his grandsons have different ambitions and education albeit the same soft-spoken Urdu).

Near Chowk is Tunde's kebab shop, famous amongst tourists and locals alike. However, for juicier, softer, incredibly scrumptious kebabs, stand before Tunde's hole-in-the-wall and veer left to the unmarked, smoky shop next door. You'll find that this no-name, no-fame shop serves up infinitely better fare than Tunde's flaunted food.

One bit of unseemly architecture that most Lucknow-wallahs would gladly bypass is the Parivartan Chowk round-about - only if it weren't so difficult to do so, should you wish to get to the heart of the city. Just beyond it, however, is the Begum Hazrat Mahal Park where the Begum of Awadh declared war against the British in 1857. To this day, the park continues to be the main site for political rallies and demonstrations. For the picturesque glimpse it affords into the dynamics of Indian democracy, it merits a visit.

Lucknow's intrinsic links with the dynasties at Delhi can be seen in the city's numerous gardens, the most interesting being Safdarjung Gardens, named after its founder. Located on Ashok Road, this park reflects the Islamic style of formal gardens adapted to India and now serves as a favourite spot for romantic trysts.

Lovers also gather at Hazratganj Road for more sanctioned activity. Originally called the Queen's Way and open only to British carriages, the road now serves as a late night drag racing strip for daring teenagers. Lined with shops, some of which date back to the Raj, Hazratganj is the favourite place to shop for clothes, handicrafts, furniture, antiques and souvenirs. Hazratganj is also a good place to eat and the best choice is chaat seller near the Lee Cooper showroom. So fascinated was he with Lucknow's graciousness that he moved permanently from Mumbai or Calcutta (the story changes with each visit). In addition to whipping up a range of delicious chaat-stall cuisine, his speciality basket-chaat-dahi-tikkis seved up in an edible bowl made of what look like fried-up falooda.

Some of the old shops in Hazratganj stock the famous Lucknow chikan work. While the newer boutiques present fashionable twists on this traditional embroidered linen, the older shops are the best bets. Apart from the kurtas and salwar suits, some of the old families also manufacture bed-linens, tablecloths and lehengas in this distinctive style. Of course, if you want chikan work or other exquisite embroidery created on demand, the best bet is somewhere in the streets of Aminabad, where some of Lucknow's oldest families of artisans produce sophisticated linens and trousseaus on request.

At Nishatganj, shops do brisk business in the shadow of a massive flyover. The right place to buy leather goods from neighbouring Kanpur at throw away prices, the area is also a sale point for quality bhang. And during the day, bookies do good business under the flyover - whether it be a lottery ticket or putting money on an Indo-Pak cricket match or the football face-off in the European League. Surprisingly international and slick, the bookies here are bet crazy. Bring a three-legged horse, a toad that can jump or a motorcycle with a souped-up engine, and you'll pick up more bets in five minutes than in an hour in Las Vegas.

The nearby Gol Market harbours the Ritz Sweet Shop, which provides the world's best moti-choor ke laddoo (take my word as a pukka Banarasi) and amazing dahi-tikki-chaat. The kulfi-falooda here is a daily staple for me whenever I am in the city.

History-buffs head for the Residency, on the outskirts of the old city where British residents were besieged and bombed in one of the worst battles of 1857. The bombed-out ruins in the massive park-cum-corest, the antique guns and cannons that protected it are still visible. One of the buildings has been restored into a small museum and someof the rooms are furnished in the Raj fashion. A small beautiful English cemetary is a chilling reminder of that war.

As children, the Residency was our favourite picnic destination. Long ago, we memorized Subhadra Kumari Chauhan's stirring poem, "Jhansi-wali Rani", here and the lines took on special resonance amongst the ruins. The Residency's extensive overgrown grounds hide many secrets in the form of gravestones, ruins and remnants of old garden trellises. Hidden arbours and clearings make it an ideal place to spend the day.

Thirteen kilometres away from Lucknow, the sleepy hamlet of Kakori is the birthplace of the delectable Kakori kebabs (and of course, the Kakori train robbery by Bhagat Singh and friends). According to legend, Siraj-ud-Daullah had his chef beheaded because one of his guests complained that the kebabs were too tough. So the chef's assistant took upon himself to improve the cuisine. He marinated the meat overnight in hollowed out pineapples, thus giving birth to the soft Kakori kebabs. Incidentally, this is the only place in Lucknow where kakori kebabs can be found.

Lucknow moves to a slower pace than most cities of its size and a good way to spend an afternoon in at the maze of Burra Imambara. Possibly an erstwhile venue for decadent Nawabi orgies, for a traveller the maze provides a taste of chills and thrills the old fashioned (pre-Jurassic Park) way. Sunset over the incredibly symmetry of the adjoining buildings is a mrvellous conjunction of the best man and nature can offer.

Come nightfall and the perfect Awadhi evening requires a trip to the ancient Carlton Hotel. This refurbished haveli offers a taste of sumptuous Awadhi cuisine in an ambience redolent of languid Nawabi nights. Ghazals and thumris play over the immaculate gardens and soft lights make the haveli glimmer. The best place to dine is outdoors, where old torcehs light up the night. Sit back, sip a beer, bite into a succulent kebab and soak in the mellifluous thumri wafting over the fragrant Malihabadi breeze. Now you are really in the Lucknow of the Awadhis.

Warning: I have left much of the post unchanged from when it was first written, providing only two minor updates.

Full disclosure: A large chunk of my first novel Nani's Book of Suicides (2000) was written in Lucknow. I still have great memories of that period.

A Different Angle to Women Reporting on Conflict:Beyond Lara Logan

2011-02-25T14:01:00.002Z

I must start this piece with a disclaimer (Usual readers: you'll see why this is necessary): At no point do I support or condone sexual violence towards or harassment of Lara Logan or any other journalist or indeed professional trying to do her job. This piece is NOT about the sexual harassment/violence that women journalists face but rather of the "whitewashing" of the issue in the debate following the much publicized attack on Logan.

As a kid in India, I had family and friends who were/are journalists. Some of these are women. They covered riots, wars, crime, the Union Carbide gas tragedy. They were true heroines and my inspiration. Growing up in India, writing fiction was not a viable career choice and I always thought that journalism was a respectable, even noble, second option. Not surprisingly, after finishing my BA, I took up journalism. I worked as a reporter, editor and free-lancer off and on for fifteen years in all sorts of places in Africa, Latin America, India, on stories that ranged from culture to business to human rights abuses. And I used those skills for a range of media driven organisations: state-owned, private corporation and advocacy groups.

What I learned in those years of reporting convinced me that just as the feminist theories of universal sisterhood had meant the silencing of non-white female experience, the same holds true for the practice of journalism. Outside India, many of my colleagues were drawn from an internationally motley group, primarily made of Europeans and north Americans. Most were male. Like many women reporters, I had to work twice as hard to get the "tough" assignments, to prove myself as capable as the men.

But I had a second disadvantage: I also had to prove myself better than the white female reporters. You see, despite self-avowedly "liberal" milieu of the typical international newsroom, an implicit hierarchy still exists. The liberalism of my editors and colleagues meant they pretended to be blind to my race while continuing to assign stories that demonstrated their racist assumptions. And no, I will not go over instances of the prejudice simply because this post is not a whine or a rant!

The colour-blindness played out more oddly at the level of colleagues. My white male colleagues, for most part, would deal with me without the sexual charge that often informed their interaction with white female reporters. So in a way, my skin colour gave me the added benefit of being sexually invisible as well with the result that I could drink and "hang" with the boys and swap tips without any of the "baggage" that marked similar interactions for my white female colleagues. This had its good and bad: I developed a great network, felt less sexual pressure, and felt no need to "out-tough" the guys. The bad side was that I felt invisible, was treated by many white female colleagues as the male "runt" of the press club litter and often dealt with visible contempt. Crossing of race and gender ensured that I was always the outsider.

Yet the same qualities gave me a strange edge while in the field. Even as most Latin Americans recognised me as a foreigner, my dark skin provided a strange protection: identified clearly as not linked to the social, economic, political and military power structures (ie EU/UK/US), and people spoke to me with greater ease. In Africa and parts of Asia, my Indian-ness was and still is recognised and generally greeted with great affection, something for which I have to thank Nehru's foreign policy and Bollywood films.

Time and time again, locals have stepped in to assist, protect and inform me in ways that were not available to my white colleagues, regardless of gender. Moreover, my skin colour ensured that I could blend into the crowds in a way white colleagues could not; and sometimes that tiny fig leaf is greater protection than any one can hope for.

There is a more complex aspect to this. Another sort of sexual invisibility protected me in crowds: People often forget that sexual harassment and violence is mostly about power not desire. Whiteness is an indicator of historic power disparities in many parts of the world (read Fanon, Said, Shohat for the complex arguments of these issues) even though many of us choose to deny or ignore this. White women thus become symbols of a larger historic imbalance of power than their individual selves, a factor in many of the cases of sexual harassment that not only women reporters but also average travellers face. In contrast, my colour gives me an unexpected advantage: harassing me provides little redress for historic grievances. Not surprisingly, I meet camaraderie and respect in places where my white female friends and colleagues only find aggression and harassment. It is an advantage that I have been always been grateful for, though I have done little to win it.

Finally, perhaps there is also a cultural education angle to this. Unlike most of my European and American women friends and colleagues, I have grown up with an acute awareness of power imbalances between genders. There is also greater awareness of cultural codes with clear sense of covering one's body and/or head if necessary without major ideological agenda. This translates to clothing, body language, even reporting techniques. Even at my most aggressive, I am/was aware of potentially transgressing cultural norms and made subtle adjustments as needed.

This too is a gift - however ambivalent - of growing up in India where we adapt and adjust as needed. It may also be a result of a postcolonial heritage which has never granted me the privilege of cultural, racial even gendered arrogance/naivete that I often see amongst many European and Americans. For example, unlike Sabrina Tevernise, I would never assume that walking into an empty hotel and encountering a man would be anything less than risky, regardless of the part of the world. That too is a complex negotiation of culture, race, gender and history!

As a nonwhite women journalist, I recognise that I occupied a strange space when covering international stories. Without ever being told so explicitly by my employers, I knew that my "value" was lower than that of my white female colleagues. And while things have changed in the past decade with increasing number of nonwhite women reporters working for mainstream media, many of the experiences and issues I mention here have not drastically changed as long as one works for a western media outlet. In frankest of terms, this means that I always recognised that I made less of a story than my American or European colleagues would (For those who question it, compare the media inches granted to Logan vs the temporary detentions of Sonia Verma the Indo-Canadian reporter or Al Jazeera's Sherine Tadros in Egypt). This knowledge informed the risks I took as well as the professional decisions I made.

At the same time, I and other nonwhite reporters can access people and places that many "western" journalists can not, regardless of gender. And that is an advantage that few media outlets can ignore, especially as the power balance shifts away from the traditionally western centres of power.

Perhaps, to reference Toni Morrison, it is the privilege of whiteness (or lack thereof). I confess that I have used it to my advantage, as have many other women journalists from Latin America, Africa, Asia. I also have to admit that it has worked to my disadvantage, although more at institutional rather than human/individual levels.

As Kim Barker astutely noted: "Without female correspondents in war ones, the experience of women there may only be a rumour." That is indeed true. But to whitewash the ways in which race and culture inform not only women reporters' functioning but also the response they receive is to be equally ingenuous as maintaining a silence on the issues of sexual harassment and violence.

I hope these thoughts capture some of my own reactions to the debate triggered by the Lara Logan incident. I write in hope of giving voice to a set of women (and very able professional reporters) who are again being whitewashed from a narrative historically dominated by white middle-class women who position their own experience as universal; in making such a whitewashed case, and with greater access to mainstream western media, they also once again silence many of us who share their gender but not their race.

Update: Eyewitness accounts from Tahrir contradict the CBS statement on Lara Logan incident making my impression of Orientalist narrative that evolved around her even stronger.

Missing Edward Said: Some Thoughts on Egypt's Youth Uprising

2011-02-06T21:34:00.009Z

Like most people, I too have been caught off-guard with the events in Egypt since January 25, 2011. For years, I have been following global events, analysing and at times writing about them. For example, I made a case for the shift of power to the east nearly fifteen years ago, when India was still stumbling unsteadily into globalisation. It has been gratifying to note that I was right!

But despite following events for the past two decades, I have to confess, I got Middle East wrong! I believed that once the power of US and Europe had shifted to the east, and the pernicious postcolonialist influences exercised directly or indirectly by Europe and US diminished, Middle East would find its feet. Mistakenly, and perhaps with a dose of cultural arrogance of my own, I believed that the region would find its historical sense of self once China and India regained their postcolonial importance.

My analysis based itself on one primary factor: culture and cultural production of a society, and its ability to control and shape its own narrative. I believed that as literature, art, music, film were so tightly controlled, that as mass scale cultural production was not happening at a large enough scale, in a free enough environment, the Middle East would not be able to shake off its postcolonial burden of an identity thrust upon them, of the Orientalist narratives of political apathy, autocracy, religious fanaticism, poverty, fecklessness.

A disclaimer: I know there will be political and economic analysts who will write more knowledgeably than me on those factors, but I am more interested in longer historical cycles, in ways in which deep-rooted cultural identities are reformed, reshaped, and revived constantly, consistently and repeatedly. Perhaps that is why I have been thinking of the great scholar Edward Said, and wishing repeatedly that he were alive to see the way his region has risen up to definitively shatter the narrative of Orientalism.

And yet the signs that perhaps a different cultural production was going on in the region were there to see. By this, I do not only mean the various Arab language TV channels, including of course Al Jazeera. I mean a larger, almost invisible, popular culture in which the region's population has been participating: the digital one.

I do not want to over-emphasise the role of social media here, as implicit in some of the lauding of that has been a covert desire for western commentrators to take credit for Egypt's (and Tunisia's) changes, as if Mark Zuckerberg were - in some fashion - a Lawrence of Arabia for the 21st century. The phenomenon goes beyond simply the availability of digital technology and social media.

First of all, some basic points which are specific to Egypt but can, with slight modifications, be applied to many states in the region:

A large segment of Egypt's population is under twenty five. While this point has been noted in economic and political terms, lets just place it in its historical context. This means that most of Egypt's youth - and the bulk of those in Tahrir Square - are truly postcolonial.

What does this mean beyond a short hand?

The literacy rate at the point of decolonization in most countries around the world in the middle of the twentieth century was abysmally low. The educated sections of the population formed a colonised elite - so amply explained by Franz Fanon - who were removed from their own cultural roots, dislocated from their own history, often collaborators with the colonial regimes that not only showered them with largesse during the empire but repeatedly jockeyed to position them as leaders for the decolonization. The strategy then was not too different from the one now: replace the regime but replace it with one that would be sympathetic.

Poverty stricken, illiterate, battered, the decolonizing masses around the globe relied on leaders - who were not only often corrupt and autocratic, but also propped up by the Cold War order - and were repeatedly disappointed.

However, this has been steadily changing over the past decades. Even the most backward decolonized nations show distinct improvement when compared to the days of the empire(s). Which is why, the protesters in Tahrir Square are no Fanonian elite. Born not only in a decolonized country, but also after Egypt's peace treaty with Israel, they demonstrate a sense of identity that does not rely on "othering" or indeed on difference. For the first time in the region, there have been few anti-Israel or anti-US slogans raised, and done so only for their complicity with their own hated regime. What we're seeing today is a revival of an older identity, recovered, revived, re-formed in Egypt which relies on itself. This is not to argue for some "essentialist" ideal, but rather a decolonization of the mind! And it is happening right across the postcolonial world.

And this brings us to the issue of popular culture. While Arab and Persian language television has much to contribute, there has also been a revolution in popular culture in the region thanks to the internet. In the (almost) decade since 9/11, more young people in the region have joined online communications with extraordinary results.

Although this process began - in a limited way - with Iraq, the first major shift that I had noted was in 2006 as Israel's began its punishing war on Lebanon. While most global mainstream media continued reporting through the typically Orientalist lens (Israel = civilized, democratic, right; Lebanon = barbaric, fanatic, wrong), there were other, newer narratives being shaped, not only on television, but also online. Bloggers posted photographs and eye-witness accounts. Suddenly those who have so long been classified by western media and governments as "collateral damage" not only had voices, but faces, homes, families, stories. Not surprisingly, since so few western reporters were actually on the ground (that is another tale, for another day), the narrative that emerged from within Lebanon was primarily shaped by the Lebanese with accounts and photographs of not only the dead and wounded, but of parties held amongst the rubble; of young people cleaning and rebuilding, of returning to their normal lives.

That story was repeated in 2008 with Israel's bombing of Gaza. Once again, photographs and accounts turned up on blogs and social media websites. In this case, Palestinian and foreign citizen journalists took on the burden as mainstream media went missing. Again and again, average citizens uploaded their pictures and accounts using precious diesel for generators.

There are many who have pointed to Tunisia as the event that started Egypt's uprising. I don't agree! Tunisia may have provided the spark, even been the first domino to fall. But the process began earlier. More importantly, the foundations of this change and its engine are not economic or political, although they are undoubtedly huge factors. The foundation of Egypt's uprising as well as many others bubbling around the Middle East are cultural. The key to this uprising is the not only the change in narrative, but also the newly found power to shape it. And that is also the reason that the political failure or success of these protests is immaterial in the longer term (although obviously hopefully they will succeed; failure will mean brutal oppression of these brave young people).

This is also the reason the dominos won't fall in the line predicted by many analysts. After all events of the past week demonstrate that access to Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and other sites is not enough. As Egypt rose to reclaim its position as a pre-eminent civilization through its "Twitter/Facebook revolution" the same websites were amply being used by Pakistan's youth to show their outrage at granting even minimal protection to minorities. There are lessons in the histories of both nations - you just have to look closely at each land in order to solve the mystery.

But for the moment, closely watching Egypt and the larger Levant reshape the Orientalist narrative of oppression, I can't help wishing Edward Said were alive to watch this extraordinary moment of history!

Curious Lessons for an Aspiring Writer: Looking Back at a Decade of Publishing

2010-12-30T16:50:00.006Z

I just realised that not only are we approaching the end of a year but also the end of the very first decade of this century. Or should that have been last year already? Regardless, this year, 2010, also marks my very first decade as a published writer. And what a difference ten years make!

Well, actually make that ten years, three countries, three books, a PhD and well over half a million published words. Phew! Not sure how I packed all that in, but it has been a fun ride so far. And yet, today is a good moment to look back at that younger me, at that naive, wide-eyed writer with a bagful of a dreams, no idea of publishing, zero contacts, and an ambitious manuscript.

There are times I laugh at that younger self, amazed at her absolute sense of belief in her own work (some have, and probably rightly so, called her arrogant). In my mind, I watch my younger self sending off her chapters to agents who suggest that she make the manuscript more "marketable;" to publishers who respond with a stock letter of rejection that she still does not know means they haven't even opened her precious work; to literary "mentors" who she does not know trade more in sexual favours and big egos than in well crafted words and ideas. And I am amazed that she walks away each time, a little bit stronger, a little bit more convinced that those purveyors of literature are wrong, that her writing will eventually find the sympathetic reader - if only she looks hard enough.

But I also wish I could protect that young writer: from discovering that some of the "big" names in the literary field have feet of clay, that they wouldn't know good writing if it came and hit them on the nose; from realising that many reviewers are driven by their own thwarted literary ambitions and ideology rather than any knowledge or love of stories; from that slow and sickening horror when her very first review in a national newspaper pans her novel based on its chapter headings rather than content, demonstrating clearly that the reviewer could not be bothered to read the book; from the knowledge that much of publishing, like many other industries, is more about who one knows rather than any focus on literary quality.

Yet - now ten years since my first novel was published - I would not change a thing for that young writer. Those years of fruitlessly pounding the pavement gave me immense strength and the crucial insight that no-one knows my writing better; that there are friends and support in the unlikeliest of places; that the most important quality for a writer is not talent or sensitivity or empathy, but rather absolute grit and obsessive self-belief. Without that messiah-like fervour, few of us can survive the cruel knocks meted out by the coterie of editors, publishers, reviewers (and no, the knocks don't stop with a publishing contract; that is just the first round of the punishing cycle).

But more than anything else, I would remind that young writer of the old Hindi proverb: अंधी गाय का धर्मं रखवाला (Dharma protects the blind cow), that the cosmic law protects the innocent. How else could I send off dozens of emails to literary agents and yet end up signing up with the only one who believes with missionary zeal in absolute literary merit of my work? How else would an Indophile reader in Barcelona pass on my first novel to a friend who also happens to be one of the most courageous editors in the country? How else would a naive kid like me, from a nondescript small Indian town, end up with an extraordinary international group of editors, publishers, literary agent, reviewers, readers and academics who champion my work in big and small ways? That in itself is a little miracle!

But most importantly I would tell that young writer-self of mine that she would find champions in other unlikely places: in chance encounters with other writers; in brief meetings and snatched conversations with unusual and unexpected literary mentors. And perhaps there is no other way but to remind myself of two brief literary encounters with more experienced writers who generously shared their insight and kindness in that first year of my publishing trajectory.

The first would be a series of brief meetings with Ruskin Bond, that gentle chronicler of the Himalayas, in Delhi as well as in Landour, when he repeatedly advised me to focus on my craft and try to block out the distractions of the "publishing circus." At an early meeting, he pointed out that it was better for a writer to not get early success as it gave them a chance to develop their own craft and ideas.

On one memorable occasion, we escaped a glamorous book event in a five-star Delhi hotel - to get chaat in the Bengali Market. The excitement he generated amongst the school kids when we walked in was the clearest reminder that a writer lives not in the inane chatter of the apparent literati but in the minds and hearts of his/her readers. Through out that meal, Ruskin got wide smiles and gasps of recognition, shy, affectionate and utterly non-intrusive greetings, and a little kid's loud triumphant announcement: "he does love chaat, he does! Just like in his book!" No amount of literary praise or prizes can replace that incredible warmth and affection that I noticed amongst Ruskin's many readers that night. For me, it was an early lesson that good writing is not about royalties or prizes or reviews, but about the abiding affection a reader can hold for a writer. I have since followed Ruskin's advice, staying true only to my craft, and have been ever grateful for his gentle guidance.

The second lesson was even shorter and more unusual, with a single brief meeting - again at a book event - with the novelist, Shashi Deshpande. That she knew me at all surprised and flattered me but the fact that she had not only read but liked my book came as the biggest shock. I veered madly between pride and embarrassment through the evening, feeling giddy and slightly sick. We spoke briefly, and later my brother and I gave her a lift back to her hotel in our dilapidated, dog-drooled, student-y Maruti 800 (she graciously ignored the dog toys and crumbs of dog biscuit on the seat, and was unfailingly courteous and lovely). As we said goodbye, she said a strange thing to me: "Get away from this city; it will stop your writing. Go somewhere where you can continue writing."

For a young writer loving the glamour and excitement of book launches, and literary talks, press interviews and society chitchat, the advice seemed a bit odd. But in the months that followed, and I found myself unable to concentrate on my writing, I realised its importance. Keeping her words in mind, I began drawing away from the literary circles, refocussing on my own work rather than the "networking." Soon after I moved, first to Barcelona, then to London, and to this day, continue inhabiting the fringes of the literary communities in both cities.

That decision to withdraw has come at a price: for example, only one national publication in India chose to review my last novel despite my editor's very valiant and concentrated efforts. And yet instead of that novel sinking without a trace, given how studiously it was ignored by the press, Indian readers continue to find it, read it and love it. More interesting is its trajectory overseas where it continues to spark debate and attract readers. (An aside: its Serbian translation also brought back a long lost friend, who found the novel in a Belgrade bookshop and emailed, after over two decades of no contact). I am now in a strange situation: even though much of my writing is about India, and often for Indians, now European and American critics engage and discuss my work more often and more thoroughly than those in my own country. I often wonder what Ruskin and Shashi would make of this weird contradiction?

So what next for this writer?

The past decade has taught me many things, but one is more important than all else: my job is to write good stories, to consider ideas, to create debate and provoke thought. And to do all that to the best of my capacity! The rest is neither my area of expertise nor my remit. My agent, editors, publishers continue to work very hard to get my writing out into the world, and for that I am very grateful. They are the ones who take risks, persuade and cajole, believe and hope, and most of all passionately champion my cause. And they do so while fully conscious that my writing shall neither be the next bestseller, and without advising me to be more "marketable." Those are the true heroes of this journey!

But then, most of all, there are my readers who take choose to spend hours of their time and energy with my books, and short stories, and essays. And they take the trouble of finding me and emailing me with their responses: indeed, not a week goes past without receiving an email from a reader somewhere (and often in very unexpected places). And that keeps me focussed on what I need to do: think more, dream more, live more. And most of all, write more.

Happy 2011! And a very happy new decade!

Speaking as a Non-Christian, Only Grinches Hate Christmas

2010-12-25T14:11:00.003Z

Alright, so I am not a Christian, never was, and never will be. However, I spent an awful lot of my childhood in Catholic schools, where for the record, I was neither abused nor mistreated. Instead I met some wonderfully committed teachers who followed their vocation by instilling their students with intellectual rigour, discipline and a respect for hard work. Along the way, I learned the Bible, sang in the choir, participated in nativity plays and, as my father mischievously reminds, also tried to get drunk on the sacrament wine.

Add to this education, my family background and may be it makes sense why we celebrate Christmas. It may be because Hinduism is culturally incapable of "fundamentalism" as we don't have a "fundamental" text (we have a dozen to choose from, often contradictory, but never literally a "revelation" or "word of god"), or because our tradition emphasises inclusivity and respect for other religions rather than mere tolerance. Who knows? But frankly, celebrating kindness and generosity is hard to dislike.

When I was very young, our traditionally Hindu home was visited by Santa who always left a book or game under our pillows. Of course, we suspected that my grandmother and uncles did that to ensure that we didn't stop believing the stories we heard at our Catholic school or read in books. Funnily enough, thanks to the Soviet kids books that proliferated in India during the Cold War, my family could also de-link Santa and the presents from religious education, just as the Russian children's books did.

Of course, it helped that we had Christian friends who celebrated the festival. Sometimes, they were alone or unable to go back to family, in which case we stepped in to help them celebrate. A meal, a shared set of carols, or grace said over the dining table has yet to hurt anyone! And when we went back to school after our winter holidays, and wrote or spoke about our experiences, our Catholic priest-teachers praised us for practising the ultimate Christian virtues: compassion and kindness. As my very first principal, Father Joseph, said to us in "morals" class, "the Good Samaritan is the best person in the Bible." Over three decades later, I still believe him.

This is why the alleged "war on Christmas" makes me sad. Even though it is couched in language of liberal multicultural tolerance, it is really about exclusion and ghettoisation. Worse still, it is about a paternalistic view of the religious minorities in predominantly Christian western countries that has little to do with reality. Even worse, all these stories about the "war on Christmas" or cancelling of nativity plays, getting rid of Christmas trees, or not celebrating it at all, rarely include voices of those religious minorities. This particular war is framed, debated, decided and fought entirely by apparently Christian western politicians and media; the dominant culture decides what the religious minorities in the West think, want, do. (Come to think of it, this isn't so different from the real wars in Iraq and Afghanistan!)

So over at the American liberal site, Huffington Post, there are a lot of personal experiences about non-Christians (mostly Jewish and atheist) feeling initially queasy about their Christian partners celebrating Christmas. These accounts are always framed as "tolerance" as the non-Christian partner eventually comes to tolerate the rituals in a deluge of self-righteousness. Hilariously enough (at least for me), these rituals tend to be limited to a family meal, presents and a decorated tree; I have yet to read an account of a non-Christian partner "tolerating" their partner's trip to a mass.

Over at Independent, it has taken some Muslims from Luton to emphasise the spirit of Christmas; of course, this is the same story where Luton's Gujaratis are apparently fighting to preserve the Bengali language, but lets not quibble over astonishing ignorance. And the ever faithful Telegraph has this rather odd story about how Christmas trees depress non-celebrants!

Pardon me, but I don't see why a Christmas tree would depress anyone but a grinch. As the only non-Christian in his flat, my brother puts up an exquisite one every year in his home. The only reason I don't put one up at mine is because I am too disorganised, although I still put up the fairy lights and decorations all over my home. When we were children, we had an artificial one that travelled to all sorts of bizarre places around the globe with us. To this day, some of my favourite memories are of coming home to the tree with its twinkling fairy lights, the gingerbread men and candy canes waiting to be devoured, and the beautiful ornaments nestled amongst the branches. Sorry, but you have to be a miserable old git to hate a Christmas tree!

To be fair, this much maligned tree study is from Canada so I have no idea about its parameters, but the newspaper article made me wonder. Is it really the Christmas tree that depresses people? Do the non-celebrants feel depressed because they know they shall be excluded from the social celebrations? What if it is their experience and knowledge that in many northern European and north American traditions, Christmas is so insularly celebrated that it leaves non-Christians feeling ever more like outsiders?

Having lived the bulk of my life in Christian majority countries in the Americas, Africa and Europe, I have noticed the huge difference between the way Christmas is celebrated in UK or the US (and from what I have seen, in most northern European countries) and the more "traditionally Christian" ones. The former don't consider the neighbours, friends, or anyone beyond their immediate circle as part of the celebrations; Christmas is strictly (if a little harrowingly) only for the family. Contrast this to places like Mexico, Namibia, or even southern Europe, where Christmas is not only a family affair but also a community one. People automatically include all others in the celebrations, which - for an outsider like me - is not only an enlightened and welcoming gesture, but also a truly Christian one: I have gone to midnight masses with friend's families, and early morning masses with the grandmothers, set up nativities and decorated Xmas trees, learned to cook obscure traditional dishes, given and gotten presents; I have gone carolling as well as sung silly songs and beat a Caga Tio. In all cases, I have felt very much a part of the celebrations, and therefore a part of the community.

Not surprisingly, I have returned the favour: setting up decorations, cooking "traditional" Christmas meals, and organising celebrations for those who cannot be amongst family. For me, it is about putting some of the good cheer and kindness back into the system, but also about opening my home and life to others.

Many years ago, a boyfriend (northern European) was shocked that my Muslim flatmate and I had not only put up a beautifully decorated tree in our home, but also planned on cooking big Christmas eve and Christmas day meals for friends who were unable (or unwilling) to go home. Despite all our explanations, he just didn't "get" it. His view was that we were not Christians so why bother; our point was that it wasn't important as the people we were cooking for were! Since then, I have met many similar people, and they all seem to share the same traits: often highly educated, middle-class, mostly northern European origins, apparently left-leaning, secular and multi-cultural. And yet they are not only deeply uninformed but also unwilling to learn or experience anything beyond the narrow confines of their predetermined realities (sometimes, I think those are also the same people who make up the bulk of the mainstream western press). But more sadly, they are also happy to project their own narrow view of the world to everyone else, projecting a sort of grand grinch-ness over the globe.

Somewhere in the process of commercialisation, religiosity, secularisation, multiculturalism, or whatever it is you call it in post-war Europe, the basic principle of the golden rule has been lost. My friends - mostly non-Hindu - help me celebrate Diwali and Holi with equal affection and generosity, just as I celebrate Ramadan, Eid, Easter and Christmas with them. And that is far more inclusive and therefore less depressing than taking away Christmas trees!

Trust me, the only reason a Christmas tree will ever depress anyone is when it stands for exclusion rather than a warm embrace.

Sweden's Rape Laws Infantilise Women? (Regardless of Assange)

2010-12-08T20:35:00.001Z

I have no idea whether Julian Assange is guilty of rape or not. If he is guilty, he should be tried (and not in a kangaroo court) and duly punished. What worries me more is a strange silence on part of journalists about a more bizarre twist in this tale. That twist is about Sweden's distinctly bizarre rape laws and the generally uncritiqued but dangerous corollary of the infantilisation of women by those laws.

The only reason I have noticed Sweden's rape laws is because of the current case against Wikileaks' founder. The facts are murky but at least this is much is clear: Assange had sex with two different women within a three day period, and behaved in general promiscuously and as a cad.

Frankly, two is less than many rock stars get up to, but then Assange apparently was far more interested in his computer than in the second woman with whom he had sex (her statement). The rock star comparison is not out of the blue. Whether we agree with Wikileaks or not, Assange has become a sort of internet, geeky version of a liberal, crusading rock star. If you think about it, he is the ultimate geek fantasy: a lap-top toting Luke Skywalker singlehandedly battling the Empire. Are we surprised that, unlike the PG rated Hollywood version, this geek not only has a sexual appetite, but also willing candidates lining up? Hell, even a killer and wife beater gets celebrity status and wild fans these days; remember the Moat saga? Assange, in contrast, has the added advantage of a liberal international halo to boot!

But neither Assange's sexual escapades nor his rock star status are of particular concern for this blog post. Instead what is more worrying are the epic twists and turns of Sweden's rape laws which appear to be applied at discretion. Already this case has gone from being upgraded to rape, then downgraded to molestation, changed to rape by surprise, rape because the condom broke, and finally, yesterday's he "used his body weight to hold her down," (which is definitely rape, but strangely brought out only three months in to the legal process).

Of more concern is a rather odd point, not discussed in the ad nauseum articles about rape in the mainstream media: that the Swedish prosecutors themselves have asserted that the consent of the women is not in question. Over the past week, as a result, my feeble feminine brain has been trying to understand how consensual sex is rape. Surely the term applies to lack of consent?

Then the accusers' lawyer Claes Bergstrom explained the contradiction of a crime of non-consent committed with consent by declaring: "they (the accusers) are not jurists.” As one of Assange's lawyers (and therefore to be taken with a grain of salt) pointed out: "How the Swedish authorities propose to prosecute for victims who neither saw themselves as such nor acted as such is easily answered: You’re not a Swedish lawyer so you wouldn’t understand anyway."

The problem here is more worrying than simply of the prosecutor or even the entire Swedish government caving into foreign (presumably US) pressure. The issue here is of a supposedly developed, socially progressive nation - which can't stop itself from taking on the mantle of moral superiority on all global issues - assuming that a rape victim cannot decide whether she has been raped.

Isn't this precisely the sort of infantilisation that feminism fought against? Isn't this infantilisation insulting and demeaning to all women, and not only those who have been raped?

As a long time feminist, a sometime volunteer for abused women, and most importantly, a woman myself, I need to say this loud and clear: a woman KNOWS when she is raped. Taking the power to identify her own rape from a rape victim is the most derogatory act that any state can perpetrate.

There is another under-reported aspect to Sweden's worrisome infantilising of women in context of its rape laws. Assange's lawyer, Michael Caitlin points out that the Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny is also involved in "reforming" Swedish rape laws.

Already, as part of that infantilising women as creatures who obviously need to be protected by their nanny state against men, the Swedish rape law apparently considers consensual (albeit regretful in the morning) sex without condom a "sex crime." Not agreeing to be tested for sexually transmitted diseases - as far as I can make out from press reports - is also a "sex crime." But apparently, these laws are not strict enough for the Swedes. (An aside: are we surprised they have such a high suicide rate? With little sunlight, cold climate and state regulated strictly conformist sex, what else would they do?)

More seriously, the impending "reform" would apparently "introduce a test of whether the unequal power relations between the parties might void the sincerely expressed consent of one party." In principle that sounds good, right?

But how will this "unequal power relation" be established? Is it money? If a man buys me dinner, is he coercing me? Or will a Swedish man, by dint of history, gender, race, all of which position him as "more powerful" be considered a rapist simply for having sex with a non-European woman like me, despite my express consent? Or will the imbalance be because of age? Shall Sweden prosecute all couples who are not exactly equal in age? What happens to not only men who like younger women, but the newly emergent breed of cougars?

Perhaps it shall be based on intelligence, with a surgeon accused of rape should she have sex with a carpenter?

Or is it temperament? Will all of us going to Sweden be required to carry insta-psychometric tests to see if each partner is of the same psychological ability? What if a woman had sex with her partner while the latter is suffering from the horrific man-flu, would the Swedes believe that she were being coerced by his whinging?

On a more serious note, are these "reforms" actually yet another racist law meant for immigrants but couched in "liberal, protect European culture" vocabulary?

Back in my riotous days of student protests in the US, we demanded that "government get out of my womb." But in Sweden, it seems that the government is present in the beds, vaginas and wombs! All in such a benign big brotherly fashion that even Orwell would have trouble imagining it.

To be absolutely honest, Sweden is welcome to infantilising its women. This isn't the feminism I fought for, definitely is not the feminism I support, and will not be one I will teach to the young girls of my family.

World Literature Today runs issue on Writing from Modern India

2010-11-08T15:31:00.000Z

University of Oklahoma's venerable magazine World Literature Today (established as Books Abroad back in 1927) has dedicated its November/December issue to writing from modern India.

Of course, the focus on Indian writing is not new for the magazine. It carried a brief survey of Indian poetry back in 1939 by Vasudeo B. Metta, while its 1954 issue considered contemporary Indian writing more comprehensively in an essay by Mahendra V. Desai. In 1969, just as the Beatles were discovering India, WLT dedicated its autumn issue to Indian writing, this time with an introduction by Nissim Ezekiel.

The next time the WLT searchlights found Indian was in 1994, again at a critical juncture, soon after the country had launched its long process of economic liberalisation with the corollary of unprecedented growth. That issue, guest edited by Vinay Dharwadker, devoted a hundred pages to Indian writing from a host of major languages including carrying many original language poems alongside their translations into English.

2010 seems an appropriate moment to return to Indian writing. The hyper-excitement of the western publishing industry about the country's writers in English of the 1990s has now settled into comfortable familiarity. With clockwork regularity, Indian writers (from India, expatriates and of the diaspora) deliver interesting, powerful, politically engaged and emotionally charged poetry, fiction, essays, and turn up regularly on international awards nights and bestseller lists.

And yet, as an Indian writer (who writes mostly in English, for the record), I am always disappointed by the lack of dissemination of brilliant writing by the country's greatest writers. Here I must confess that - at the risk of sounding parochial - in my opinion, the country's best writing is done in languages other than English. Writers in the country's regional, autoctonous languages push boundaries of class, faith, gender and sexuality, as well as literary techniques and style, in ways that many of us, writing in English, can barely begin to imagine.

WLT's India issues have always gone beyond the English language in seeking out writing from India. The current issue is no different. Guest edited by poet Sudeep Sen, the issue features the some of the best loved writers from Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Oriya and Malayalam, in addition to writing in English by Indians based in the country as well as around the globe.

More pleasurable for the reader, however, is the issue's exuberant mix of old favourites and new writers, as well as the stellar diversity of ages, genders, regions and interests. It is this diversity that fulfills Sen's self-declared aim of providing not a comprehensive list of authors but rather "just an introductory show window to the vast array of fine Indian writers and literary practitioners."

A slightly different online edition (featuring an unusual selection of poetry by Rabindranath Tagore) can be found on the WLT website which also has instructions for obtaining the very beautifully illustrated and designed print edition.

All in all, a lovely celebration of India's literary practices.

PS: As full disclosure, I must also inform you that the print version features my short story "Faded Serge and Yellowed Lace," my small tribute to my years of living in Spain and dedicated to (and set in) my old neighbourhood of Gracia, Barcelona.

Against Book Bans: An Open Letter to Rajan Welukar, VC, Mumbai U

2010-10-11T12:34:00.001+01:00

Some of you may already be familiar with the sudden decision to drop Rohinton Mistry's wonderfully evocative novel Such a Long Journey by Mumbai University. The decision was taken mid-way through the term and for no academic reason. It also appears to have been taken without any clear academic procedure.

Apparently, Aditya Thackeray - another budding thug leader of the Shiv Sena clan - is at the point of being anointed the youth leader of the party's student wing. The novel, which dwells on the Sena's thuggish history of violence and intimidation in Mumbai, is obviously an easy target, allowing the goon-in-making to score family loyalty points thinly disguised as a pro-Mumbai rant. It must be noted, in all fairness, that in keeping with the behind-the-screens tradition of the family, Aditya Thackeray has been noticeably silent and missing from this whole saga, although apparently the protests and book burnings have been carried out at his behest.

I believe it is time for responsible citizens then to stand up and protest. So this morning, I emailed this letter to Mumbai University Rajan Welukar, protesting the ban and in the hope that an 18 year Thackerey may learn that perhaps violence may not work as a political tactic in the future. If you feel as strongly about establishing and maintaining a stable, democratic, free India, as I do, definitely drop a line to Mr. Welukar protesting his cowardly surrender to political thugs. He may be emailed at: vc@fort.mu.ac.in

Dear Mr. Welukar,

This is to strongly protest the unceremonious dropping of Rohinton Mistry's novel Such a Long Journey from the university curriculum.

Not only does such a decision cede to the power hungry fanatics who threaten our democracy and polity, it also smacks of cynical pandering on part of university officials who are apparently bending over backwards to help launch the political career of yet another unthinking, undeserving young thug whose only concern is perpetuating his familial power base rather than any national, state or even local community interest.

Regardless of Shiv Sena's thuggery, surely the university has a responsibility not only to instill academic discipline and intellectual rigour in its students as well as contributing to their formation as responsible citizens. This last is the key role of Humanities in higher education and banning books at behest of thugs - no matter how violent - is abdicating this responsibility entirely.

Best,

Sunny Singh

Making Myself at Home in the Chateau de Lavigny

2010-09-01T10:08:00.003+01:00

Odd Memories of the Family

I suppose I should be thankful to my family that I find myself feeling very quickly at home at Lavigny. The chateau’s completely arbitrary combination of high art, antiques and kitsch reminds me of my parents’ home where random plastic souvenirs rub shoulders with whimsically personal art from Latin America, extraordinary wood and copper works from Africa and just stuff we seemed to have inherited from some eccentric ancestor.

Through out my stay, I feel a constant sense of homesickness, mingled with nostalgia and familiarity. The emotions come in waves: I want to run right back home in the evenings; my morning cup of tea, taken always on the steps of the French windows to the garden, is oddly comforting; working in the living room is a favourite, partly because it makes me feel like a child again.

Perhaps I am most off-kilter in my assigned bedroom, originally that of Jane Rowohlt herself. This is vast, all in pale pistachio and peach and gold; a wide swathe of frills and lace and silks, so hyper-feminine that it unnerves me. Then I figure out, typical desi-style, or perhaps like that urchin my mother had often accused me of becoming, that I can sit on the floor to work, with the low platform for the bed serving as my own little seat. In making myself at home, I throw off the silken covers, pile up the lacy pillows on the sofa, and drag the heavy down duvet down to the floor. Each tiny gesture of making myself at home feels vaguely like a desecration, like a secret intrusion into someone else’s bedroom, but I plough ahead regardless.

The bedroom leads to the dressing-room, a room lined entirely with built in, lit closets. Apparently, they were once filled with numbered haute couture dresses by Yves Saint Laurent; my handful of t-shirts seems just a bit bedraggled and desolate in their depths.

There is a desk against the window, nominally designating it as my work space. But the boudoir chair in the corner reminds me that even this manageable space is really meant for a woman far more glamorous than me, that it is really the domain of a woman who is an artist of the body instead of the mind. It is a slightly mysterious place, reminding me inexorably of my mother and the teak panelled, mirrored dressing room I always associate with her.

The space is simultaneously unfamiliar and comforting, and on long days, I find myself sitting at the desk not to work but to stare out the window and daydream. Perhaps for the same reason, I have strange dreams, often about my mother. Joyous dreams, including one where we are caught in a rain-storm. My mother has always been supremely elegant, and thus slightly intimidating. Enjoying being caught in the rain seems a bit beneath her. And yet she does so, with abandon and laughter in my dream.

The bathroom is what feels most familiar in the suite. It is huge like the ones in old Himalayan bungalows where I grew up, and equally draughty. I keep expecting the separate toilet to have a hidden door to allow waste removal in the mornings. It is not nearly as simple as the ones I remember from my childhood: one wall is lined with grand built-in mirrors, with golden ornate fittings, a faucet shaped like a golden swan’s neck in the bathtub. I find myself wishing my sister could have a go at this wonderful space! I remember that when we moved into a house full of bathtubs many years ago, she was only six and yet she was the one who enjoyed it most, like some amphibious being finally finding her own element.

The entire chateau feels terrifically feminine, which is why I am not immediately reminded of the men in my life. The items that I know my brother would appreciate with his finely honed sense of the social ridiculous are the animal-shaped knife-rests at dinner. Slightly deformed, oddly expressioned, barely recognizable pig, rabbit, dachshund, ram, squirrel and fox rotate through the table over the days. These are items almost forgotten in our ruder, more casual era but provide a touch of magical silliness to the table, and one can never be sure if one ought to take them seriously or as a ridiculous bourgeois conceit.

It is the garden that reminds me of my father. When I walk on the vast lawn, apparently emerald and well-groomed, I still see the weeds that need removing. Often I am tempted to find myself a little seat and set myself to cleaning up the lawns, as we do at home. Sometimes I find myself looking over my shoulder, slightly bemused, convinced that he is lavishing care on the roses, the lavender, the hibiscus even as I type away on the laptop. Exactly like at home!

But even indoors, there are little things that I know my father would appreciate: the Chinese peg tables with detachable tray tops; a hidden music room with an extraordinary LP collection and a strangely anachronistic sound system; a wine cellar that must truly hold enough for the best of parties. My father always gets a mischievous, wild glint in his eyes, a wide happy grin, when he finds a place or person or thing that amuses him. I can imagine him enjoying an entire house dedicated to secrets and amusement and parties.

Finally, it is these links to my family that help me feel at home at Lavigny: the fantasy that I am once again in another of the strangely decorated houses that my family would occupy with each move. That I am a child again, moving into yet another ‘diplomatic residence,’ once again with the familiar, weird and wonderful mix of luxury and kitsch, whimsy and formality. And that is really what gets me through my weeks at Lavigny (what my sister very aptly qualified as “voluntary house-arrest”): an imaginary half-sense that one day soon, we will just rip off all we don’t like from the walls and table-tops to store it in the garage or the attic, and make this space our own. After all, haven’t we done it over and over again?

Le Chateau de Lavigny: First Brief Impressions

2010-08-24T10:50:00.000+01:00

So, I just survived my very first writer’s residency!

Three weeks in a Swiss chateau, all comforts catered for, time and space rigged up for writing. With living literary history not only haunting the quaint villages but dwelling within each photograph and painting and sketch on the walls, woven even into the spectacular silks of Jane Ledig-Rowohlt’s bed where I sleep.

There were five of us. All writers. From across the world: USA, New Zealand,

Nigeria

, and of course yours truly.

All in a beautiful summer villa, full of books and art and literary memories. Water colours by Henry Miller; photographs of Lewis Carroll’s child muse, Alice Liddell framed in burnished gold and cream. Scattered amongst the books are numerous pretty pieces of glass, and china and metal. And little artefacts of whimsy: a couple of dozen porcelain King Charles spaniels of varying sizes, some whose heads wrench off to reveal a pitcher; they unnerve the writer who must sleep in that chamber. A pair of heeled wooden sculptures carved like Victorian buttoned shoes stand on an imposing chinoiserie, too small to fit any feet even had they been real. In the library, the books seemed to be held in place by hefty vintage earthenware jars from Fortnum and Mason’s marked cheddar and stilton. Why do they live in the library? No one seems to know the answer.

Our interaction at the beginning is a little awkward, a bit hesitant, like a blind date with no convenient way out. But slowly we manage to get along, carefully avoiding any rough edges, any potential pitfalls. It is a diplomatic manoeuvre that I renounced, consciously and deliberately, many years ago and is a great effort to revert to childhood manners; I can imagine I would not be able to retain the façade for much beyond the required three weeks.

Indeed, midway through I make a long distance, expensive, late night call to a friend. Much like an addict needing a fix. Our conversation is wholly political, heated, silly; wholly inappropriate. I hang up knowing I will survive the self-imposed isolation. My sister rather aptly pronounces that I am “volunteering for self-imposed house arrest” although, in all fairness, I do take walks to the neighbouring villages, wander through the vineyards and orchards and sunflower fields. So perhaps, house arrest with a little electronic bracelet to ensure I don’t wander too far afield?

At the end of the second week, we have a reading of our works, not necessarily what we have been writing but whatever we choose to read. Strangely the reading does more to break the ice than any other activity we have undertaken. Suddenly, we can identify each other, mentally find a place for ourselves: our words are indeed our disembodied selves, perhaps far more powerful than any other.

The rest of the residency passes with greater camaraderie, a great deal of hysterical laughter over the routinely extra bottle of chasselas at dinner.

The end, when it arrives, is a relief; and a surprise; and strangely tinged with sadness.

Technical Gaffes

2010-07-20T22:47:00.002+01:00

Apologies to those who are not interested in politics. For some odd reason, my last blog post has been crossposted on to this blog. I am working off the assumption this is primarily human error (mine!) although still not quite sure how, although of course it may well just be the usual technological snafu of our times.

Either way, apologies and do keep an eye out for a new post soon.

Appointment of the Prime Minister: Real Politik Continues

2010-07-20T21:34:00.006+01:00

Book 1, Chapter 8

Apologies once again but deadlines intervened. But lets forge ahead nevertheless.

Chapter 8 provides a sort of job description and personnel profile for three key appointments: the prime minister, key members of cabinet and the royal priest.

Chanakya spends most time detailing the qualities that a king should seek in his prime minister or the official who will be the head of the executive branch. The very long list of qualifications for this post range from professional abilities, natural talents as well as personal type. The list that I reproduce below is fascinating not only in its far ranging criteria but also for the priorities it places on various aspects:

1. This official must not only be from the state but also deeply connected to it.
2. Free of any major addictions and bad habits. Chanakya especially considers alcoholism and drug use and promiscuity, beyond the rather wide range of permitted sexual behaviour in those times, a practical risk. It is worth noting that Chanakya's definition of sexual misbehaviour concerns risky sexual behaviour that extends to partners of other influential citizens. Adultery in the western Biblical sense was not nearly an issue in his times.
3. Must be a good rider/controller of chariot, horse, elephant and other vehicles of war
4. Must be well educated in cultural arts, including poetry, music and dance.
5. Must be well versed in political theory and practice, including of course, Arthashastra (although to be fair, Chanakya is talking of the entire corpus of political education rather than plugging his own book).
6. Intelligent, with not only 7, a good memory, but also 8, the ability to read and understand people.

Have to confess that I am not surprised that Chanakya privileges patriotism about all other qualities for this key post. What I am intrigued by - as you will notice - is that he privileges loyalty to the nation/state/kingdom/land over any personal loyalty to the king. Indeed, loyalty to the king is much lower on the list. This is especially apt as Chanakya himself held the post of the prime minister and is obviously writing from personal experience here. He appears to be quite aware of the distinction between a king's interests and that of the realm, and believes that the prime minister should act in accordance with the latter. Once again this is an early indication of a more republican and less monarchist/absolutist tendency in classical Indian political thought.

Interesting also that warrior abilities and cultural finesse take precedence in Chanakya's list over political knowledge. It is almost as if the initial criteria for the job ensures that it is open to all able citizens (nagaraka) of a state. Still, the emphasis on culture is telling, especially for our times when any sense of cultural education has been devalued as non-utilitarian (or useful for commercial enterprise).

Chanakya also spends a fair time in specifying the necessary verbal talents and abilities, explaining that the prime minister must be able to :
9. Speak appropriately, in regard to occasion and company,
10. Crush others in debate,
11. Refute (or as Sarah Palin prefers "refudiate") any untruth or propaganda in a convincing manner,
12. Spin, or create a favourable meaning from something unpleasant that is said.

Am fascinated although not surprised that the verbal/debating skills are so heavily emphasized, even though Chanakya is writing not of a professional politician in a democratic sense but a political appointee. However the need for getting the state's message out across a wide cross-section of constituencies is obviously immune to vicissitudes of history.

In addition, on a personal front, the prime minister should be 13, passionate and driven (good point!); 14, influential and convincing; 15, capable of facing adversity and opposition; 16, well behaved - not in the sense of meek but rather free of course or uncouth behaviour; 17, worthy of friendship; 18, capable of sticking to a decision and opinion; 19, loyal (interesting that loyalty to the king comes fairly far down this list!); 20, calm and even-tempered.

The final seven qualities may seem to repeat the earlier ones but obviously Chanakya believed they needed reiteration or more precision. These are more character traits rather abilities and include:

21, capable and strong; 22, healthy in mind and body, with no chronic weakness or ailment; 23, steadfast, and calm in moments of crisis; 24, modest and without arrogance; 25, stable in moods, and thus not likely to waver; and 26, pleasant looking (I guess leaders had to be presentable even in ancient times!).

And finally, 27, the prime minister should not be vengeful or indeed have any long standing enmities. Strangely prescient this bit, in light of Peter Mandelson's memoirs of the Blair-Brown years in government. Perhaps, Chanakya should be made compulsory reading for all aspiring politicians!

Chanakya ends this section with a wonderful recommendation: a king should attempt to find a person with these 27 qualities for the prime minister's post, as one possessing all the listed qualities is the superlative one for the job. However, in the spirit of practicality, he ends with pointing out that a person with a quarter of the listed qualities is a mediocre prime minister. Implicit in this suggestion is that in the absence of a great prime minister, a mediocre one may be necessary, although in case of the latter, the king should be aware of the fact and thus keep a close watch.

The next two sections of this chapter are on qualities of the cabinet minister and the royal priest. I hope to include those as soon as possible. I do have to confess to having a slight bout of RSI, which means typing is a (literal) pain.

Writing Fantasy: A Secret Childhood Game

2010-06-19T11:04:00.001+01:00

As a child, I had a favourite if secret game. I would cover a book with brown paper that we used for covering our text books. On the newly concealed spine, I would painstakingly write my name with a dark coloured, felt-tip marker. This was the particularly arduous part as I have never been good at colouring within the lines, or indeed drawing straight lines (Let psychologists make of this what they will!).

Then I would find a particularly good spot on a bookshelf. Luckily my grandmother's house had many of these. Somewhere between works by my favourite writers of the moment, I would place the newly created volume, now with my own name on that covetted spine. The very first time, I played this game, I remember placing the book between Enid Blyton's Naughtiest Girl in School (which my aunt said was really about me) and Arkady Gaidar's Timur and His Squad (which is what I desperately wanted to become). For much of the afternoon, I pretended that I had written a book that some other little girl loved as much as I loved those two novels.

Then as the afternoon drew to a close, and the family began to rise from their siesta, I took the brown paper off my English grammar exercise textbook and threw it away.

Over the years, as I grew, I played that game over and over again. Alistair McLean and Jane Austen; Jack Higgins and Charles Dickens; Emily Bronte and Leo Tolstoy. At times, I would leave the brown-paper covered book on the shelf for an evening, wondering if anyone would discover it. Then I would suffer absolute spasms of stress: equal measure of curiosity, anxiety, and an absolute terror of the teasing from my cousins that would follow should my act of literary fantasy be discovered. It is a feeling I have grown to know well: equal measures of desperation that someone should read my work and a deep dread that they shall loathe it.

Some times, I would play in my uncle's room, a small den at the back of the house with all sorts of hefty, arcane medical tomes on the bookshelves (and Playboys hidden under the bed). Once I covered one of his books with a fictional title: How to Save Lives, written of course by a ten-year-old me. That was a superb afternoon of fantasy: of saving humanity from itself, of turning into a hero!

Perhaps that is really at the root of wanting to be a writer: a combination of wild fantasy of needing a story, alongside a terrifying awareness that one can never be a hero. It is at least what drove me in those early days: I was too little to be of much use, too protected and weak to battle great dragons. There was little recourse but to tell stories where, if I couldn't become a hero, at least I could create one.

As I grew, the game changed a little. I no longer needed to cover textbooks to see my own name on spines. Instead, it became a "safer" game: I could walk into any library or bookstore, look out at any bookshelf which held my favourite writers and I could - in my mind - imagine my own name on a spine nestled between those greats. As my ability to fantasize (and knowledge of literature) grew, so did my ambitions: Dante, Thackerey, and Rimbaud; Doctorow, Golding, and Garcia Marquez; Tagore, Lessing and Potok.

I am convinced this fantasy pushed me to not only finish my first novel but also to expose myself to nearly three years of critique and rejection before I found a publisher. No matter how dejected I got, no matter how deep the depression, somewhere in the back of my mind was always a bookshelf that held my favourite writers and me!

In the past ten years, since my first novel was published, I have published other things: more books, some which have been translated; short stories, that have been published and read in various parts of the world; articles, essays, even this blog.

In these past ten years, I have walked into bookstores and libraries and seen my book on sale, and each time felt that jolt of recognition and excitement. Once in France, at a FNAC, I had to pinch myself to believe what I was seeing: my book was in the section for literature in translation, sitting just at the end of the shelf, just after Rushdie and Saramago. Yes, I know it was alphabetically arranged, but I still hugged myself with joy and walked on air for a long time after!

I suppose this is what keeps me focussed on writing: I was never interested in money, except to the measure it gives me my independence. Fame is interesting but most of it seems a little ridiculous and distracting: I know Rushdie famously said that all writers wanted to be rockstars (just noticed that I have managed to throw his name around twice in this piece)! But I just wanted to be accepted into that elite club that beamed down from our bookshelves.

As I look back over the ten years since the publication of my first novel, I do recognise the milestones: not only what I have published but all that I have written; there is an increased control over my craft; the growing clarity of my own thoughts; a persistant need to improve not only what I write but how I write it. Of all these, I am proud.

But what really matters to me is something quite different: every time a piece of mine is published, I draw one step closer to realising my childhood dream. I still haven't written enough or of sufficient quality to satisfy myself, but there have been some great moments on the way: seeing my name in a publication alongside Isabella Allende, Mario Vargas Llosa or JG Ballard should be reward enough. Yet I still hanker after that elusive book-spine with my name running along its side that can sit with ease amongst the greats.

At the end, my definition of my own success as a writer is simple, and for that reason, all the more difficult. In my mind, I will succeed if a child somewhere, in another time, will look up at my name on a bookshelf and desperately want what I wanted: to be counted alongside.

PS: I had been thinking about this for the past few weeks. Then yesterday Jose Saramago died and I realised that less than a year ago, I had achieved a personal milestone: a short story of mine had been included in the same magazine as him. I don't know if he noticed or even looked at that magazine, but I would like to think he did. Saramago: storyweaver and teller of truths. RIP

Are Women Ever Allowed to be Happy?

2010-05-09T11:09:00.001+01:00

I know that sounds like a strange question because when I look around me, most women I know are quite pleased with the way their lives have panned out. But then I open the newspapers and magazines, and when these are not peddling gloom, doom, Botox and thousand pound shoes that have been inspired by Chinese foot-binding, they are telling us about how we are truly unhappy!

Recently there is an absolute surfeit of these unhappy-coz-I-succeeded articles racing around British press. It started with columnist Allison Pearson explaining in dreary details how her terribly successful life made her depressed. Then Marion Keyes, the unrelentingly upbeat author of happily-ever-after chick lit novels went to town about her depression. And lo and behold, we were all depressed! Driven to suicide because our jobs and paying bills were not enough, being able to publish novels and create art were not enough; nor was having children and raising them to be decent human beings not enough.

Then of course the rest of the media circus got into the act, reminding me inexorably of Susan Faludi's brilliant book - and I know most of you have forgotten all about it - Backlash. And yes, I know it is overambitious and over-reaches at points, but the basic premise of the book seems to have held true since its release back in 1991: every time women make significant social, economic and political progress, there seems to be a knee jerk reaction from mass media against this. Worse still, it seems we have stopped talking about it, because - as the media (and some of my young students tell me), feminism is so "out-dated" and "unfashionable" almost as if women's right to equality were no different from a pair of Jimmy Choo heels.

And yet, we must talk about it. The recent Dove ads in America drove home the point of how young girls are tyranized by images of physical perfection. But perhaps someone needs to create a commercial about how women are all tyranized by images of other unrealistic fairy-tale perfection: John Lewis, yes, I am talking to you!

Which is what brings me back to this media-driven epidemic of depression amongst 40-something women. Agreed I am looking at a relatively small sample size, and definitely not a random one, but I can't see these depressed-because-of-perfection women anywhere. I find that most women of my acquaintance are hitting 40 and getting a second wind: physical hang ups have melted away, as have ridiculous expectations of fairy tale lives. Instead they all seem to be living extraordinary lives, perhaps finally enjoying the rights earlier generations of feminist fought for.

Some are marrying while others are single or dating. Some are even having children, although few are ever going to be baking cupcakes for a bake sale; it will be a box of from the local supermarket or nothing! (And no, Laduree macaroons are too precious to waste on a bunch of kids!). But mostly they are challenging themselves, physically, mentally, emotionally, taking more risks and pushing the boundaries: marathon training for a former couch potato, launch of a new business in the midst of a recession, emigrating across the world, buying homes and redoing them with great gusto (and absolute personal style).

In all of this, there is a pattern: most of these very happy women are careerists. They have slaved to build their lives, bank balances and professional profiles for quite a few years. Even when they are leaving high flying city jobs to go farm in Australia, they are backed by a financial portfolio (and practical skills) they have built over two decades. It reminds me of what my mother has always held as the cornerstone of women's rights and drummed into our heads all through our childhood: economic independence would set a woman free!

Reverting, however, to the backlash driven media narrative unfolding around us, most media stories (written cleverly enough by female journalists) stress that women are unhappy having it all. That somehow no one told them that there would be a price for "having it all." The tone in these pieces is not only patronizing (really, grown women need to be told this?) but also implicitly infantalizing (see, little girl, if you want to play with your dolls, you can't play on the swings at the same time).

Worse still, and this brings me back to Faludi, the embedded message is one that has been historically only reserved for women (never the men!): don't excel at anything beyond the confines of your home! Don't even hold ambitions of material and intellectual excellence because not only will you fail, but that success -should you achieve it with blood, sweat and tears - will make you unhappy (depressed and suicidal in modern parlance). Moreover, should you still choose to test your fate in those fields of achievement beyond the home, you shall be punished: judged for your lack of maternity, derided for your achievements, shamed if your kitchen not meet the same standards of excellence that you bring to your professional life.

Female emancipation it seems is not only about economic independence then, but also about building an enormous strength to withstand the undermining narratives that bombard us. (Note to self: the happy women in my life - students, colleagues, acquaintances, friends and family - need to be seriously commended for their amazonian abilities to excel in face of such opposition). And just for that, I am planning to include Susan Faludi on my undergraduate reading list for the next academic year. Its about time women - however few of us are ready and willing - started pushing back!

Oscars, Kathryn Bigelow, Hurt Locker: Quintessential America

2010-03-10T19:36:00.001Z

Much has already been written about Hurt Locker's double win at the 2010 Oscars and of course, the historic achievement of a woman director finally achieving the "Best Director" award. And congratulations are indeed due to Kathryn Bigelow. This however is neither a review or a comment on her win, but rather general thoughts that came to me as I read various pieces about her.

First, in all historical fairness, technically a woman director HAS won an earlier Academy Award, except not in the coveted best director category: Marleen Gorris directed Antonia that won the Best Foreign Film award back in 1995.

Also, I am somewhat bemused that Bigelow's seems to play right into the narrow, almost archaic feminist narratives that I thought we had moved beyond. Way back in the 1980s as a student in US, I would remain silent about my reservations regarding a feminism that seemed only to apply to white, middle-class women, and required these women to somehow behave like men in order to achieve a mythic "equality." When I started reading the likes of bell hooks, I was hugely relieved! I wasn't alone in being alienated by that narrow definition of feminism.

The Bigelow win (along with recent events discussed on this blog in the past week) brought back memories of those days. Yes, she got the Oscar, but she got it for a properly "American, boys movie." Ironic, by the way, just how many veterans have been questioning the veracity of the film's events! These are most likely the same guys who pump their fists and cheer along to 24, not only for great entertainment but also for its "realism." In fact, the narrow confines of the discussion around Bigelow's win is perfectly demonstrated by this NYT article. In a way, Bigelow exemplifies the early feminist model: you want to play with the boys, dress like the boys, act like the boys, BE one of the boys! It is a strangely Euro-American model of feminism and one I have never quite managed to understand (coming from a country where wearing a sari gives me far more power cred than square shouldered suits would).

Reading the NYT piece, I was reminded of Sai Paranjape, a self-avowed feminist director from India who won the Filmfare award for best director back in 1985. Her movie, by American standards, would get classified as a "girly" one or worse still as Disney's latest quest to drop girl titles from fairy stories shows, a "chick flick" that "alienates boys." Paranjape's Sparsh was a delicate exploration not only of relationships, but also the complexities of the male ego, the consequences of physical disability, and the human ability to sabotage our own happiness. Yet it is as easily accessible and impactful for a man as for a woman. Its neither a "women's" movie nor one that attempts to out-macho the boys.

Of course, the list of the Filmfare winners has a definite preponderance of male directors, and god knows, we could do with more women filmmakers everywhere around the world, including India, but the list also shows a clear difference from the Oscar winners: most of the films on the Indian list are not muscle-bound macho sagas (regardless of their liberal/conservative leanings) that seem to dominate Hollywood in varying guises. Even the male directors from India seem to explore far more social and emotional issues in their narratives than those on the Oscar list and in ways that are neither hyper-masculine or indeed with any particular male view (perhaps this may be one reason, in addition to the obvious issues of competition for market share, that India has yet to win an Oscar in the Foreign Film category?). Of course, the issue of scopophilia (that Bigelow mentioned in a run-up interview) doesn't even begin to apply to Bollywood's multi-gaze, multi-perspective cinematic universe.

I was also reminded that I can think of influential women in cinema right through my childhood. The 1930s screen legend and producer, Devika Rani was the first recipient of the Dadasaheb Phalke award for contribution to cinema, the country major "life-time" achievement award. Raj Kapoor's key films not only featured Nargis, his muse and actress, but she also worked on scripts and production, a positive corollary of the industry's "heterogenous mode of production." Beyond the confines of the industry, women actresses, producers, filmmakers, have served on national committees for film and culture and served as chairs for the country's (very problematic) censor board. They have been good, bad or indifferent in doing these jobs, but have rarely been judged based on their gender.

Even today, I can think of a dozen or so filmmakers who make quality cinema in India. And, in the particular case of Farah Khan, it is a woman director who (for the moment) has a 100% blockbuster ratio for her film production, a figure that can only be compared to Don Bradman's batting average!

This year's Oscars also scored another "historic" moment: the first African American - Geoffrey Fletcher - won the award for screenwriting (for Precious). Of course, Lee Daniels was also in the running with Bigelow for the Best Director award for that movie (strange echoes of Obama elections here).

I suppose that brings me to the second difference I have noticed between the Oscars and the Filmfare. There has yet to be an African American filmmaker to win the biggies! And even the nominations in the past, including that of Spike Lee, have always been for clearly "black" films rather than an "all-American" movie.

Again, I am reminded of the huge difference between Hollywood and our much derided "Bollywood" industries. (Clarification: The example of the Muslim minority in India as a comparison is meant simply because the community is the most sizeable, and given various US "reports" on other countries, narratively linked to the subaltern status comparable to race ones in the USA. This does not intend to exclude the "caste", language, or regional minorities or other religions, all of whom have been closely involved with the film industry).

Can we Indians imagine a film industry where no Muslim won the best director or best film award for decades on end? Can we even begin to imagine an industry without the likes of Mehboob Khan, Sohrab Modi, Ardeshir Irani, Kamal Amrohi, John Matthew Mathan, and other directors of all sorts of minority affiliations? Even worse, can we imagine a Muslim filmmaker only making "Muslim" movies? What would be do without Mehboob Khan's Mother India? Or Farhan Akhtar's Lakshya? Or Salim-Javed's extraordinary scripts? Or Kaifi Azmi's delicate lyrics. And god forbid that they decided to stay only within the confines of the "minority" flicks, rather than big India narratives!!!

I know we are supposed to be keen on the Oscars, but I stopped watching them nearly two decades ago. Too boring, too same-same. Frankly, and yes I do mean this, give me Filmfare awards any day (the clowning around with Saif and SRK, and all those glitzy dance numbers help as well!). Days like this, I have to say: hooray for Bollywood.

What an Amazing, Manic 2010! Updates

2010-03-03T11:18:00.000Z

Okay, for those of you (precious, precious few yous!) who follow my blog and have been wondering why there have been no updates, here is the low down: the past two weeks have been mayhem!

I have been madly working, writing, catching up on chores, organising. For the first time in my life, I am even re-doing my humble abode to make it more comfortable and fit-for-purpose. All in all, the blog has had to take a backseat. Of course, part of running around chasing one's tale is that there is really very little to report or indeed ruminate upon.

However, there are two key updates:

First, I had a brilliant time at the LSE's Fiction of Development event. As always, LSE has uploaded a podcast of the event that can be accessed here.

Some of the questions were rather predictable (and annoyingly so), but the positive side was to note just how many students are ahead of the curve: the best, most thought provoking questions came from them.

It also threw up the "developed" vs "developing" world divide in stark contrast. The non-European/US students were far more aware, better prepared and more thoughtful. They were also willing to engage in debate, challenge their own and others' assumptions, and were far more passionately involved in the issues the panel raised. After the event, over drinks, these were the students who approached me and raised even more issues that they felt had been left out during the session.

Having done similar events before, I guess this response could have been predicted. But one statement by a student made over a glass of wine really made me sad that we haven't moved beyond the narrow confines of the colonial mindset. She told me: "Thank you for being on the panel. Your views made me realise that I am not the crazy one. That there are other people who think like me."

Back in the 1980s, as a student in the American north-east, I would often keep my mouth shut on issues of race, gender, power because my views were so completely different from those being expounded by (mostly American) experts on campus. I had hoped that this had changed in the past decades; that there was more diversity of voices and views for students who were still building their viewpoints.

Then again, I can't remember hearing/seeing anyone on a panel who articulated my thoughts. So if just by my presence or by my views, I can provide either validation or confidence to some student, perhaps I am doing something right. And that in itself is no mean achievement.

Second, Palgrave Macmillan has just published Religion in Literature and Film in South Asia, edited by the wonderfully passionate and dedicated India scholar, Diana Dimitrova. It has some really amazing essays by scholars in Europe, India and US. It also carries my comparative analysis of Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan's star personas, the ways these interact with the Mahabharata and Ramayana, and how they reflect their respective zeitgeists.

So all in all, very productive start to 2010.

Fiction of Development: Event at LSE

2010-02-08T11:35:00.001Z

This is a slightly crazy week full of commitments that I obviously did not realise I was making. As a result, this is a very short post. However, if you are in London, it may be a useful one.

I am participating in a panel discussion on Fiction of Development at the LSE Literary Festival 2010. The panel is scheduled for Friday evening and is free, although you do have to book tickets in advance. If my fiction, or indeed the issue of socially and politically engaged fiction interests you, please do come around.

The panel includes Giles Foden of the Last King of Scotland fame, the Malawian poet Jack Mpanje and David Lewis who started off this conversation with his paper (written with Dennis Rodgers and Michael Woolcock) on fiction and development.

I am looking forward to the panel for personal and professional reasons. On a personal front, because LSE is sister's old alma mater and I have a lot of friends who studied there. So it holds all sorts of great memories. Professionally, I am pleased to be part of a discussion that needs to take place - that fiction often sheds light on issues of development, social change and conflict that is perhaps not take as seriously in academic circles.

Perhaps this panel will be an initial step towards fostering a dialogue between novelists and social scientists.

Where Three Dreams Cross: Well Worth a Look!

2010-01-28T13:07:00.001Z

Last week I walked around the newly refurbished Whitechapel Gallery in East London to go through an enormous exhibition of photography from the sub-continenent with over 400 images dating back over a 100 years. Phew!

First of all, yes, I wholeheartedly recommend Where Three Dreams Cross. It ticks all the boxes: iconic photographs by master photographers like Sunil Janah and Raghu Rai; archival portraits of colonial era Maharajahs; stills and photographs of beloved movie stars; some really good sociological and documentary work; and of course, if you just love photography as an art form, some really amazing work that is at once passionate and intelligent.

As an exercise in highlighting photography from the region, this is an amazing project. One of the curators, Sunil Gupta, himself a photographer and exhibiting currently in London, explained that the project took nearly four years to bring life. And the hard work shows.

Now a couple of observations:

1. For an expat, and definitely a "new" (as in post-colonial, post-Partition) Indian, the ideological agenda for the exhibition is a bit troubling. An exhibition that somehow makes the three nations "look" so similar and thus blames the political divisions on history or some sort of false distinctions is problematic in itself. When that exhibition is held - with self-rightous glee - in the country that carried out that bloody process of history, then one is left feeling distinctly queasy.

Perhaps it is a generational issue: Sunil Gupta is of an earlier generation, and perhaps feels more nostalgia for a "united" India than most of us from the sub-continent. Moreover, I was left wondering once again why racial or cultural markers are somehow meant to make us so "similar." How often do we see an exhibition on the region of Savoy (divided between Italy, France and Switzerland) with a similar intent? Or on Catalunya (divided between France and Spain)? The implicit imperial conceit in erasing our contemporary political and national identity in favour of racial/cultural markers encodes us in well-known colonial boundaries. And those are not only out-dated but also grate.

2. Pakistani writer Kamila Shamsie has already expressed some of her unease in her piece published in Pakistan's Dawn and UK's Guardian. As I am not writing for mainstream press, I can be a bit more blunt. No, I didn't find myself trying to find images from India, but then that may be a function of our size.

I also realised that we - as in Indians - are better at representing ourselves than our neighbours. When we got the first camera, we immediately deployed it to "flatten" out the photographs to represent our cultural aesthetic instead of wielding it to re-create the western post-Renaissance three-point perspective. We hand-painted the early portraits, overlaying technology with miniaturist precision to create images that were us.

Then in the 1930s, we took on German and Soviet oppositional aesthetics and deployed them for anti-colonial and then nation-building purposes. The techniques were shorn of their Nazi (yes, that influence does not quite get a mention) and Communist agendas and used the way we wanted, for purposes that suited us.

Recent photographs reflect the same: we are good at representing ourselves, and more at ease being represented, than our neighbours. Perhaps it is a corollary of the past 60 years of democracy and republicanism, or merely our much-criticized hotch-potch secularism. But this exhibition definitely emphasises our love affair with the camera.

3. Another aspect that bothered me about this exhibition, and again I believe this resulted from its ideological impetus: India, at least it seems in the exhibition, ends in the south at Mumbai and in the east, at Bengal! I guess Tamil Nadu, Deccan, Kerala, North East's seven sisters don't quite allow for the easy racial/cultural markers of "unity" with Pakistan and Bangladesh. However, this studied invisibility of our non-north/centrals parts really bothered me.

In making the Three Dreams Cross, I feel that the Indian dream has been purposefully mutilated.

And that brings me to a final quibble: I understand the exhibition is about the three big countries in the sub-continent, but I would have liked to see more from other nations in the same region: Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, especially as, in the final case, issues of political borders formed by colonial heritage are still playing out in horrific bloody detail and are very much a colonial legacy for that that teardrop island nation as well.

Perhaps, I should just put aside my hopes and admit to the one fact I would prefer to forget: that like all exhibitions, this one says more about the curators who put it together than about the region it purports to show.

PS: I spoke to Harriet Gilbert who presents the BBC World Service show The Strand about the exhibition. Fortunately, Sunil Gupta was also there. You can find the chat here (just let the player go past the 16:30 minute mark for the segment to begin).

Pleasantly Surprised By Gordon

2010-01-24T18:59:00.000Z

I don't normally watch television. And moreover, for the sake of my own sanity and blood pressure, I do not ever watch programmes made abroad about India as they all follow the well-worn loop: poverty; exotica; poverty; look an erstwhile royal; poverty, oh-wow-an-elephant; poverty again.

But when Gordon Ramsey's Great Escape ads started popping up on my facebook page (talk of advertising!) I was intrigued. After all, I like food and he is a famous chef. But what clinched it for me was the relatively negative reviews the show got from the British press. With properly postcolonial reasoning, I decided that if much of the British press didn't like the show, there had to be something good about it.

So off I went to Channel 4 website to check out the three part series (apparently, there is a book of the same name but as I don't buy cookbooks, it doesn't really matter).

My reaction after watching all three episodes?

Well, he is brash. And he is foul-mouthed but not nearly as much as some of the Delhi taxi drivers I have encountered. And after all there is only so much offense the same recycled half-dozen four-letter expletives can cause, unlike the very graphic, very colourful Hindi or Punjabi di galis! One grows inured to them quite quickly.

Yes, he was a bit silly. Yes, he tasted food although he was eventually told off for it even on camera. Yes, he was the bumbling, slightly arrogant Englishman abroad, annoyed that people didn't speak English, or amused that they didn't speak it properly. Yes, this is part of the "gentler, kinder" Ramsey re-branding. But it all made for good television.

More importantly for me, was that there were genuine moments of loony happiness and Ramsey's ability to take pleasure in them was infectious! Despite television's formatting, the enthusiasm and giddiness shone through: especially on his Nagaland and Kerala sections.

There were also oddly touching moments of vulnerability, and not only in the kitchen. It was kind of cute to watch Ramsey suck in his stomach, especially in profile.

And of course, hilarious to watch that Bollywood catch-that-train fantasy has permiated even British cooking shows. Yes, it was staged, and yes, he wasn't really missing the train but it was sweet to watch nevertheless.

Finally, full marks for going into Dharavi, explaining that it was where the abominable Slumdog Millionnaire was filmed and then not falling into the same trap! Ramsey cooked sambhar on the street with a famous Dharavi chef, played cricket and served food at the birthday party. Yes there was poverty but it was also a more "real" version of Dharavi than Boyle's one-sided take. Ramsey's team picked up on the Dharavi (and other slums) in India where there is joy, entreprenuership, pride in one's achievements, and aspirations alongside the hardships.

Just for that alone, Ramsey may have found a new fan!

I am soooo sick of this one!

2010-01-15T01:39:00.002Z

Okay, so this one was just basically a bomb waiting to go off: I have been wondering recently about various (sort of and former) friends who live where they do because its safely "white." They tell me that they think their preferred neighbourhood has good schools, where their kids "learn the national ethos", but frankly when I look at the Ofsted figures, these are the schools that do poorly for one key factor: diversity (read slowly: "good" Home county schools are "great because they are predominantly white").

And then it makes me question why we were ever "friends" at all? Was I their token "race" justification or proof against racism?

Its a bit worrying when you start wondering how racist your friends and lovers really are; and if they have been using you as their token for proving their non-racist credentials: Kills all respect and affection, I promise you!

But the reason the proverbial cup runneth over tonight of all nights (is that WAAAY too many references pulled together in way too few words or its just me being too bookish?), is getting to the Times page and seeing the ultimate F&CKing cliche! Sigh! Really? Are we f*cking done?

How often do you see me - the brown Indian woman, and no apologies for the language - declaring that there is something SERIOUSLY wrong with white people because they think that Haiti's earthquake happened because Haitians made a pact with the devil? When do I expand that one statement to the general populace? But I guess that measured thinking is the requirement only of the "other" and the marginalised!

And when do we - as in the brown people - start using a single dumb statement as a point of explaining how stupid, prejudiced, backward, illiterate, prejudiced, white people were?

See my point? Generalisations are dumb! And prejudiced! And based on a lack of understanding.

So when I see a headline talking of: "Millions Rush to Cleanse in Filthy Ganges" I want to scream! I want to point out to these little white/middle-class (and yes, believe me, few people who are not either/or get employed or consulted at the Times) insular shits that they need to get over themselves!

That poor brown people like me who think nothing of bathing in a "filthy river" think that "their" reverence for the queen and the royal family is just as if not more idiotic! Hell, bathing in that filthy river gets me benefits post-mortem but you lot bow to a some human who is supposed to be greater than all others in the land WHY? So WHY do modern, post-Enlightenment, educated, humans bow and courtesy to these "royals"? Frankly, I will bathe in that filthy river a million times before bowing/courtesying before a pathetic human who has no worth beyond their birth! And PLEASE tell me HOW the Brits can justify that reverence for the monarchy as any more rational and logical than the Hindu partaking of the Mahakumbh (and we are not even getting to religion here!)

One good reason I have always thought for never giving birth to a child on UK soil is that the top post in this country is hereditary! I mean WHAT sort of a loser accepts that as part of human development? And as a life-long republican, I can't see the point of ever raising a child with that sort of absurd limitation. But of course, as the apparently enlightened Brit journo will tell you: certain kinds of "royalty" are okay: funny how the British press is quite happy to talk of their own and other European royalty in laudatory terms but of course anything nonwhite is "oppressive," "backward", etc, etc.

So yeah, I am sick of this one!

I am SICK of getting the bloody colonial British take on India (and much of the world) over and over again. And worse still: you know the Brit press's favourite "uncle Tom yes-life-is-so-great-out-here-coz-we-have-no-clue" British Asian take? Get OVER it: most second and third generation British-Asians (immigrants in general) are people who have no clue about India or the general subcontinent! They don['t speak the language, don't know the traditions or history or literature. Their parents were often illiterate when they got to Britian/USA and hardly in position to talk of their "culture." The first city they often saw was not Delhi or Lahore or Dhaka but London or Manchester. Its like having a random American be an "authority" on Britain simply because somewhere two or three generations ago, their parentage was Welsh or Scottish or English (funny just how much fun the Brits make of the Americans looking for their heritage but then have no qualms turning the lens the other way).

Point being, this is not just about cultures as in east or west but also urban vs rural. I find a 3rd generation British-Asian from the midlands is more backward/conservative than a first generation Indian villager who went from a home without electricity to working for NASA in six years (thats IIT graduates for you!). But that is the point for a different post.

It is the embedded, intrinsic colonial conceit that pisses me off. And I am not quite sure what it would take for the people who peddle it constantly to realise that the empire is over. And frankly such retrogressive headlines don't do any good: the balance of power is shifting. Grow up and deal with it!!!!!

PS: Not particularly erudite, I have to say, but this has been written at the spur of the moment and I am furious (not unusual). I try to not blog when I am angry, but today, I make an exception.

"In Praise of the Delinquent Hero" out now!

2010-01-08T19:05:00.002Z

This is a good moment to plug a new anthology, How They See Us: Meditations on America, edited by James Atlas.

When I was asked to write for it some time back, I thought it was a good idea. After all, haven't the Americans been proclaiming their confusion about the reasons why so much of the world doesn't like them, or is disappointed, disillusioned, saddened by them, since 9/11? It seemed like a good moment to open a discussion about how the rest of the world sees the US of A. I had no idea who else would be included in the collection, but it seemed like a great opportunity.

Well the anthology is now out. And boy! Whoa! Some serious heavy hitters in there: Mourid Barghouti, Terry Eagleton, Alberto Fuguet, Luis Fernando Verissimo....and of course, the minnow: ME!

Needless to say, I am pretty chuffed!

More interesting for me than the actual publication however is the reaction the anthology is raising from the American press. After all, as a non-American writer, this is an amazing opportunity to observe American reactions in a specific context: a sort of intellectual petri-dish if you will.

Sadly however, the initial reviews of the anthology seem to confirm what I have long thought: that there is a small band of Americans who are interested in actually hearing what the non-Americans have to say. San Francisco Chronicle (even though they got my gender wrong) and the Publisher's Weekly seem to reflect that America (that is the one that I got to know during my years as a teenager in NYC and then as a university student at Brandeis). However, beyond this circle, most Americans don't care about the world beyond their borders (and as such are constantly surprised when that world doesn't agree with their own self-image).

I have also been reminded of a remark that Belgian friend made back at university about how Americans didn't get irony, especially by the WaPo review which ends by quoting Verissimo's piece. Did the reviewer really read that anecdote straight, without irony?

If so another anthology, and another, and another may well be in order!

Lessons of 2009 (Part II): Amazing Friends Equal Happiness

2010-01-02T15:08:00.000Z

A couple of months ago, in the midst of massive personal upheaval, I commented to my sister that I was extremely fortunate to have so many exceptional people love me! Her response, rather predictably, was to thank me for thinking her exceptional.

So I clarified: "Actually, I am speaking of my friends. Family has no choice but to love me." (Further note: My sister did make a very good point that the above is not quite true. A lot of families are unhappy enough and feel no need or motivation to love each other).

But getting back to the point: 2009 was the year of learning just how many extraordinary people form part of my life. For most part, they have very little in common with each other - except me. This was highlighted when we were at a house party over my birthday: my friends didn't necessarily know each and shared even less. They were drawn from different parts of the world and hold wildly divergent interests, political ideas and world views.

Lets be honest: a dance school owner, a clown, a banker, a terrorism expert and a bar owner have very little in common, although it does sound like the opening line of a long, complicated joke. And yes, that is just a cross-section of those who travelled from around the globe to be at my birthday.

I have thought about it a great deal since that party and finally realised that despite the overt differences, my friends share one thing in common: their incredible passion for life and their insistence on living each moment of it. Not one of them follows rules set by others nor tries to conform to what is expected of them by social norms. It is a tougher way to live as they often fight harder for what they believe, have more complex (and often unachievable) ambitions, and always inhabit liminal spaces regardless of the company they keep and societies they live in. And yet, they would have it no other way, choosing over and over again to live their lives on the "tip of the rabbit's fur" (to paraphrase Jostein Gaarder).

They are extraordinary not only because they are deeply loyal and caring, but also because they are good at nurturing others' ambitions and dreams. No matter how outrageous the ambition, or how far the goal, none of them ever seems to voice a doubt. Instead each wild idea provokes gales of laughter and then a determined attempt to see how the person chasing it can be supported.

Before this all begins to sound too happy-shiny-people-y, let me point out that none of this means their lives are perfect. Indeed far from it! Living at the tip of the rabbit's fur seems to mean making more and crazier mistakes to learn from, and falling lower and harder and far more often than those who live safer, more conformist lives. Despair when it strikes one of us seems deeper and darker than for most others, and perhaps because of it, happiness is also shinier and brighter than others.

An acquaintance told me some years ago that she found just hearing about my life exhausting. Looking back at 2009, I realise just how much living my friends have packed into a single year. Not surprisingly, anyone without the same passion for living each moment seems to fall quickly by the wayside: partners, lovers, and new friends who are initially attracted by energy and passion often find the pace tiring. Worse still, I am beginning to realise that far too many people choose emotional safety even if it means stagnation and misery over taking chances and living fully. Yet when one of us meets a partner or friend with the same kind of passion, they quickly become part of our lives, linked not by any shared interest but by what my sister once termed the "wooo-hooooo" factor (as in the ability to go through life as if on a perpetual exciting rollercoaster)

My mother says that lots of people like grabbing the tail of a comet but they can't last the ride. 2009 made me realise my friends are like those comets. We all have different paths and trails, and we don't always manage to be in the same country, or same life-path to be able to connect except very briefly. On the other hand, there is always a mutual recognition of eachother's blazing paths. And there is an instinctive respect for our shared ability to embrace life - no matter what it holds - regardless of the risk and and pain. Perhaps, thats why we stay friends.

And for that, I am very grateful.

A Writer of Varanasi: Writing of Saints and Warriors

2009-12-16T10:21:00.000Z

As a child, I lived in Varanasi – that ancient city in India that seems older than all of human memory. Those were special days – idyllic summers spent in the shade of the guava tree in my grandmother’s house; the cold winters spent basking in the sun with a book in the backyard. All the while, the brass pennant of the old Shiva temple – of Barhajkothi – fluttered high above our heads, gleaming in the sun. It was a constant reminder, along with the periodic sound of the conch-shells ringing out in prayer - that we were fortunate to inhabit the city of Shiva.

I made up stories even as a child. The earliest stories I remember creating featured a brown bear that didn’t really do much except spend time happily living in a comfortable cave and occasionally charging some unwarranted intruder. I am sure psychologists would make more sense of that particular leitmotif of my childhood than I can. However my favourite memory is of sitting on a peedha – a low wooden stool – in the kitchen. My grandmother would be preparing the food while I ate my dinner. We always ate in these traditional thalis – huge metallic platters that gleamed dull pink-gold – and with matching bowls. As children, we got the big bowls, fluted like wide lotus flowers. For dinner, we would get a thali with a big bowl full of hot milk – from our own cows – with crushed up chapattis. And in a smaller bowl would be the vegetable portion of the meal – generally something combined with potatoes, because I was finicky consumer of greens.

While I sat and ate my dinner, my grandmother and aunts would cook dinner for the rest of us. There were stories about my aunts’ day at the university, and my grandmother’s memories of times past. And of course, my brown bear! My grandmother always patiently heard out the complicated incoherent epic sagas that must – in retrospect – have been terribly boring. And she always feigned an interest that seemed sincere. But then, our house was always full of stories. Everyone seemed to tell stories – of the past, the present, and in case of my favourite uncle, of distant lands.

As I grew in that house, I realised that all I wanted to do was to make up stories. Of course, I didn’t know precisely what I could make up stories about. So I asked my grandmother, the source of all wisdom in my childhood. She had a simple solution, one that I wondered hadn’t occurred to me earlier. She said “write stories about saints and warriors.” I think she wanted me to write about warriors because that was our genetic legacy. And she wanted me to write about saints in desperate hope that I would somehow be inspired to follow their example and behave well.

The problem was that saints are not a very clear concept in Hindu thought. So my grandmother would tell me about Meera-bai, the fifteenth century poet-queen who gave up everything to follow her dreams. Or she would tell me tales from the Mahabharata, where no one is particularly saintly. Every so often, if I had behaved particularly poorly, my grandmother would tell me about Sita – the ultimate in saintly behaviour. I personally thought she was a weepy dishrag, and I have a sneaky feeling that my grandmother wasn’t terrifically fond of Sita either. But the story had to be told – after all, Sita is the model of womanhood held up by traditionalists in society. Besides, we apparently traced our blood lineage back to Rama and Sita, so in a sense it was family history.

Of course, we would end each session with a flaming row: I would refuse to accept that such saps could ever be our ancestors. My grandmother would feel honour-bound to take offence and attempt to explain how the lineage extended back to them, all noted down in a miniscule letters on the early pages of our family Ramayana. I would challenge her on Rama – who I considered a particularly poor example of a man – and Sita – who I felt spent far too much time passively lamenting her fate. She would argue feebly until finally accepting that “yes, yes, but that is the way it is written in the books.” Then we would happily revert to snuggling up together for a tale that contained more blood, gore, adventure, valour, and somehow, less morality. I suppose even back then, we were renegades – my grandmother and I.

However, none of the above solved my problems regarding saints that I was supposed to write about. There was the “aghori” ashram across the street of course. The ascetics who lived there, I suppose, would qualify in some way as religious. Except the aghoris were wild-eyes men with matted hair, bloodshot eyes and unpredictable tempers. They were also not particularly pleasant, as I fully understood, even as a child. The aghori ashram also had a running feud with their next door neighbour, one of the leading entrepreneurs of the region.

The aghoris aren’t particularly the most desireable neighbours in any case, even by moderate Hindu mainstream standards. Simplistically, they are a tantric Shaivite sect of Hinduism. They take the idea of interconnectedness of death and life as their basic precept. As a symbol of this understanding, the gate-posts of the ashram were topped by human skulls. On the other hand, they consume liquor and dhatura, eat flesh, speak obscenities, dress scantily. There were always rumours of sex – of all forms – although they may have simply been rumblings of adults. We weren’t allowed to approach the ashram or enter its gates. In fact, my grandmother had an injunction against any of the girls in the house even giving alms to the aghoris.

Our entrepreneurial neighbour – of course – wasn’t too thrilled with seeing skulls from his own garden. So for a period of nearly three years, a tacit war was carried out between the aghoris and the capitalist. The businessman would periodically raise the common wall between his house and the ashram to block out the ghastly view of the skulls. The aghoris would wait patiently until the wall would be built up, cemented, painted freshly white. And then the next day they would raise the gate-posts of the ashram higher so that the skulls would tower again over the neighbouring wall.

The ongoing war between the aghoris and the capitalist of course provided much amusement to the rest of the neighbourhood. But the sight of human skulls was also a special lesson that Varanasi teaches its denizens. While they are children! Death is a fact of life, for most Banarasis. And it is neither to be feared nor dreaded. Instead it is a something to be mocked, laughed at, accepted as a pesky but familiar neighbour, and finally, embraced with love and affection. This is why the city is the cosmic cremation ground as well as the Anandvana, the forest of joy.

Perhaps that is why we all were so mocking of the funeral processions we constantly crossed. As you may know, Varanasi has a special place in Hindu philosophy. The city is believed to rest on top of Shiva’s trident, and thus Varanasi alone is not destroyed when Shiva dances the tandava. It also has special powers because of its unique mythico-geographical position. Simply living three nights and three days in the city is believed to grant a soul moksha upon death – liberation from the cycle of rebirths and the goal of all Hindus. Simply dying or being cremated in Varanasi is a great karmic act and can secure a better birth or a cosmic holiday in the Hindu paradise-spa. This is a reward for souls between death and birth and is by no means permanent; one is simply granted a short holiday from the cycle of rebirth by spending some time in paradise.

Of course this means that lots of people bring the dead to be cremated in Varanasi, and often the city seems to live a constant stream of funeral procession. Every few minutes one can spot grieving relatives, all clad in white, grim and exhausted, walking two abreast along the road. The corpse is generally carried on a make-shift stretcher of bamboo and wrapped in orange/yellow cloth, and covered with flowers. As the funeral proceeds, the pall-bearers and mourners chant out loud: “Ram naam satya hai” – “The name of God is true.”

As children growing up in Varanasi, we had our own version. So on our way back and forth from school, all crammed up in big school-buses, we would crane our necks out to check for funeral processions. “Ram naam satya hai” – the mourners would chant.

“Murda saala mast hai,” (“The bloody corpse is happy”), we would gaily chortle back. Nearly seventy grimy-faced cheerful urchins would stick out of bus windows to mock the demonstrations of grief in our city streets.

As an adult, I have often wondered if I ought to feel mortified at mocking the grief of those poor people carrying their dead to the cremation grounds. Yet, always, the Banarasi in me wins out: death must be mocked at and diminished. Otherwise its shadows grow so long and dark that it can snuff out all that is joyous and ridiculous in the world. Besides, I always remember the manic grins we got from the aghoris for the act. For that alone, our mocking defiance of death and grief was commendable. Unfortunately, all this means that the idea of writings about saints was quickly complicated by the masti (joy/madness) that Banarasis value above all else.

The second part of my grandmother’s injunction meant writing about warriors. We knew lots of those, of course. There was an ample supply in the family tree, without needing recourse to the history books. Of course, it helped that we lived in restless times, so we never needed to look too far for warriors. My father was an officer in the army. My great-uncle would always show up in the city wearing his cartridge belt across the waist-band of his dhoti, his rifle slung across his shoulder. Then there were sundry relatives, and constant feudal conflicts involving various family members, politicians, dacoits seeking amnesty, police chasing rebellious student leaders…In all, death, and violent death, never seemed too far away.

Besides, there are only two possible ends to war: victory or death. And all victories are similar, ephemeral, paving way only for another battle. An endless litany of battle victories makes for poor stories. So the only stories that can be told of warriors are of how they embraced death, gloriously, joyously, laughing into the bright sun even as the swords clanged, and ground grew warm and fertile with the spilled blood.

Yet mine was not a frightened childhood by any means. Or a traumatised one. It was an idyllic childhood in many ways where love and affection abounded and loyalty and laughter filled our lives. The only difference was that we were never protected from the reality of death – and its constant presence.

Not surprisingly then, a lot of my writing is about death and the joy of life. It is about people making sense of life in the face of death, or even re-affirming life even as they die.

Perhaps, in a strange way – and in strangely arcane ways – I am a Banarasi writer after all. Some part of me is constantly aware of the fragility of life, and its unbearable beauty, much like the fleeting sun-rises on the Ganges. Yet another part of me is simultaneously aware that the sunrises on the Ganges are never-ending, and are repeated unfailingly every day; that life and death go hand-in-hand, and are valuable, terrible, magnificent, for that conjunction.

I have been often told that my writing is violent. I have been told that my writing is disturbing often for glorifying that violence. But perhaps that is a lesson only understood by those who have lived in Varanasi: by those who have seen the sublime beauty of a red-gold dawn spreading like so much fine silk over the Ganges at Dashashwamedh ghat even as blue-grey smoke rises from the pyres at the Marnakarnika ghat nearby. No image of Varanasi would be complete without the intermingling of the two aspects, like Shiva himself, of life and death. Similarly, my writing would be incomplete without that image of death-life – an unbearably beautiful but wild-eyed Shiva smeared with the ashes of the funeral pyres, with snakes twirling around his neck and limbs, accompanied by a band of ghouls and demons – terrible and wondrous at the same time.

My writing – I suppose - is simply the same as that of writers of Varanasi for so many millennia – an invocation of Shiva in all his glory.

NB: From a talk presented at the University of Cordoba in 2006. PEN International Magazine's most recent issue carries a Spanish translation of this essay.

The Lesson of 2009: The Year of Overcoming Fear (Part 1)

2009-12-09T13:32:00.004Z

This is first of a series of posts looking back at 2009, and also the past decade.

There is one thing 2009 taught me: that nothing is more frightening than fear itself. Does that sound like something Tolkein would write? Or Gandalf would say? Actually, as I learned over the past year, its absolutely true.

The lesson was especially odd as I have never thought of myself as a particularly fearful person. Actually most of my friends and family worry about the exact opposite: I get an idea in my head and then proceed to implement it, often without any regard to my own safety and sanity.

That was what happened many years ago when I decided that I refused to suffer from vertigo. Actually, I am not even sure that I was ever afraid of heights. I just worried because I wanted to leap of the edge, which kind of meant that I was afraid of going to edges of balconies, mountain ledges, even tall windows.

When we lived in Manhattan, I would not stand at our gorgeous high windows for long, in case the urge to fling myself in to the endless space before me grew too strong. Which is why I took up skydiving - I figured if I threw myself out of a aeroplane enough times, eventually the urge would pass. Funnily enough, eventually it did! I still feel that tug of the void on mountaintops and skyscrapers, but having thrown myself into it, it is no longer overwhelming.

On the other hand, I have always been afraid of water, partly because of the immense power and mystery large bodies of water seem to hold. For me, the sea, lakes, rivers embody some uncontrollable fount of energy barely held in check. To take it on seems a bit foolhardy. But that is why earlier this year, I decided that if I could learn to swim well, I would be fine taking on this immense secret power.

Weirdly enough, having taken on the challenge, I have realised that I love every minute of it. I love pushing my limits - even in daily life - and swimming has just become one more arena to test myself. There have been days this past year when I have been unable to lift my arms after a session. And there have been far too many occasions where the instructor has assigned "bonus" laps when I am completely exhausted (although he does that with sly grin). He knows I will stay and battle fatigue regardless.

With each passing week, the fear of water, of the loss of control, of taking on a power far greater than myself recedes a little. In its place has developed a greater knowlege: I understand now that I need not fight the water head-on; that going along the flow yields better results. Oddly enough that is a pretty profound lesson for the rest of my life as well.

But psychological fears are harder to face and beat than physical ones, in part
because it is often so hard to identify them. 2009 opened with my past whooshing straight back into my life, bringing with it all the reminders of pain, loss and grief that I thought I had put behind me. And yes, the rational choice would have been to walk away as fast as I could, away from the those terrible memories.

But then rationality has never been my strong point. So I stayed: facing up to everything I didn't even know I was afraid of. For much of 2009, this has meant wrenching, horrible soul-searching, often accompanied by floods of memories that would often left me gasping, hyperventilating, teary-eyed. Yet somewhere in that process of facing up to the past, the fear I didn't even know I had faded, and a strength that I had never foreseen emerged in its place.

Some years ago, my mother had told me that I needed to "learn how to protect myself." I think she had probably sensed this deeply internalised fear that I had carried buried deep within. I told her then that I could not possibly do that.

For me, my over-sensitivity has always been an essential part of my ability to write. I notice everything, think of everything, feel every last bit of it. To "protect myself" meant the potential loss of this hypersensitivity. How else could I write? Wouldn't protecting myself mean shutting myself off emotionally?

But 2009 has taught me otherwise. I wasn't really being hypersensitive at all for all those years (or not at least fully and honestly). Instead, I was afraid of the emotions I had felt in the past and had found painful. Somehow, without realising, and even though I told myself that I was open and vulnerable, I had built myself a massive, inpenetrable, fortress to hide myself and my fears.

Facing the fears brought on by my past has been a very painful process in 2009. Slowly, steadily, consciously, I have lowered that internal drawbridge; ripped down the ramparts and emptied the moats. Then with even greater deliberation, I forced myself to shatter the shield, remove the armour, put away every weapon I had accumulated. And at each step, I have fought the internal panic that I was exposing myself to pain and hurt and loss all over again, and all of which I remembered all too well.

Eventually, as the autumn has grown into winter, I have learned an unforeseen lesson: that I had been afraid for so long that I had forgotten the weight of my fear. To shed my internal defences has meant letting go of the fear, of letting drop a weight that I didn't even know I carried.

More importantly, shattering my defences has not meant that I am vulnerable. Instead, for the first time, I understand what the ancient Indian texts mean by the perfect warrior: I am the weapon, the warrior, the fort! To lose fear is also to lose all interest in consequences: it is the perfect form of karmayoga: of action without desire. If fear is rooted in our desire for gain, in our need to avoid loss, then once there is no interest in either gain or loss, there is also no fear.

The past year has not been the easiest, but definitely, looking back shall count as the most memorable and rewarding. For me, 2009 shall always be the year when I let go of fear and surprisingly enough, without intent, finally learned to be me!

In contrast to 2009, I am looking forward to the new year: to what a life without fear will mean for me; how the loss of fear will change my sensitivity to the life around me; and most importantly, how that will impact my writing. Bring on 2010 - finally, after all these years of reciting it, I begin to understand my favourite verse from the Bhagwad Gita (II:27).

Watching the Universe Shed Its Skin

2009-12-02T17:06:00.000Z

Way back in time, as a university student, I (like many others before me) discovered Joseph Campbell's writings. It was like a light had been turned on inside my mind - all my strange ideas about stories, world, life suddenly made sense. It was akin to falling madly, deeply, desperately, in love.

Then, like all loves, over time, a sense of scepticism set in. I questioned the theoretically Eurocentric paradigm that Campbell used despite his "universality." I began to question some of the links he made, and critiqued his use of non-western texts and the meanings he drew from them.

Despite this - and as I have learned about love too - I didn't walk away from Campbell. He still stays in the back of my mind, still worthy of respect and affection, still comforting and intriguing, despite all these years. And like all great relationships, Campbell also introduced me to a whole new world of his own, to other friends, teachers, minds, who have also become part of my life. Including of course Karl Jung (although like one's partner's best mate, we have a slightly testy relationship, me and Karl).

One thing I learned around the same time as I discovered Campbell was to keep a tab of my dreams. Not for great psycho-analytical purposes but because I realised quickly that super ideas, images, sentences ripped around my mind while I slept. I didn't want to lose them on waking up and so began keeping a notebook with all my most lucid dreams. While I have used these images in novels and stories before, most of these don't merit being anywhere else other than my much scribbled upon notebook.

However, today, I want to make an exception. The past year has been a bit of a roller-coaster. And its just gotten weirder in the past few weeks. Perhaps this is why I have been thinking back so often to a dream I had two weeks ago:

In my dream, I was in a big house. Like all dream-houses, it seemed to be composed of bits and pieces of all different houses I have lived in and loved: the garden was from Doon, the large living room from our house in Windhoek, the pool from the holiday villa in Barcelona. It was full of light, and music, and laughter.

And in this house were gathered my siblings and many of my closest friends. We were all excited and preparing to go watch a show or a rock concert...something really spectacular and huge. We were cracking open wine bottles, calling on mobile phones, ordering taxis, running around madly getting dressed and made up.

I do not believe I have been this excited about any concert or show I have seen in reality. And that includes Madonna and the Rolling Stones!

Yet nowhere in my dream was it clear exactly what we were preparing to go watch. For an interminable time, the excitement built. There was laughter and jokes and hugs. All the usual preliminaries of a big day.

And then someone (was it me?) who was on a mobile to someone finally explained what we were going to go see: "Yes, we're leaving now. We have the tickets. We are going to go SEE THE UNIVERSE SHED ITS SKIN!"

Thats when I woke up! Baffled, awed, amused. If any psycho-analysts have any ideas about how to interpret this one, please do.

From my perspective, its the biggest neon sign message I have ever had from the universe. And that is pretty damn cool!!

The Good in the World: A Big Thank You

2009-11-28T10:48:00.001Z

Earlier this week I met a friend to catch up on the past few weeks at a local pub. While there, I suddenly realised my handbag had been stolen. Not the nicest thing to happen. But this is not a post about the awful experience of having your possessions stolen!

First, I was surprised at how calm I was - no panic, not even anger. This equanamity is something relatively new, as for most of my life I have been a bundle of nerves concealed under a calm facade maintained only with iron discipline. In fact, most of my loved ones recognise the signs when the facade cracks under proverbial "the straw that broke the camel's back" and either fury or desperate sorrow comes pouring forth. In fact, my family and friends are really great at comforting me in those moments of absolute distress, but increasingly, I realise that they are also really good at identifying the moment when my iron control will snap.

Yet this time, there was nothing. I felt calm as my friend and I reported the crime, cancelled bank cards, organised the locks in my home to be replaced, called my family, and made my way home. Strangely enough, even though I had strange and unsettling dreams, I even slept that night.

This equanimity first reared its head some six weeks ago, in the midst of an emotional crisis. I fully expected to fall apart even then, yet after the initial release of tears, there was a strange peace. My brother called it "sthirta" - a Hindi word that translates as a combination of balance, groundedness, lack of movement, serenity even. I am not sure where or how I have acquired this but frankly, after a lifetime of being hyper-sensitive combined with keeping myself under rigid self-control, it feels strangely liberating and easy. For that alone, I am thankful.

But more importantly, the stolen handbag has made me remember something more important: that there are far more wonderful people in the world than awful ones (even though you won't notice that if you read the news or even fiction).

So for the one loser who stole my handbag, here is a list of super people who helped me cope:

1. My friend who gave me his phone to make the calls, walked me around the area to see if we could find a trace (often these are quick thefts only for money), found an internet cafe so I could find my family's phone numbers, and then accompanied me home and kept me company till I got most things sorted. He also gave me running cash while my bank stuff got sorted out, and went for another seach trip the next day to see if something would turn up. 2009 has definitely been the year of realising just how super my friends are!

2. The waitress in the pub who was more upset than me about the theft and really kind and gentle.

3. The street cleaner who promised to keep an eye out for anything odd and offered kind words.

4. The policewoman who took the initial report on the phone and then the various people who man the Metropolitan Police's telephone lines who have since taken bits and pieces of information I keep remembering since then.

5. My neighbour who not only reassured me that he would let me in the front door, but also organised the locksmith, so I got home and could actually enter my flat without a second's delay, or indeed having to watch the locksmith at work.

6. The locksmith who was not only efficient but also extremely kind and comforting. He told me stories of his own car (someone took off all the wheels and left it on milk crates), and made me laugh with strange tales of his life as a locksmith.

7. The policewoman who called the next morning having gone through the papers to find my home number (I couldn't remember it initially and obviously my mobile had also been stolen) so she could follow up on the initial report, showing a diligence that doesn't often make it to the newspapers. She also spent a lot of time taking down details and was one of the nicest people I have ever dealt with in any "service" capacity.

8. The kind soul who found my staff ID and keys on the street the next morning and turned it in to my office reception.

9. The really kind man who found my wallet thrown on the street, found my business card, and emailed me so I could collect it. The wallet has sentimental value: its a near replica by the same brand of the first "designer" one I bought for myself. That first wallet was purchased in Mexico, in 1991, after six months of saving up, as proof that I was a self-sufficient adult. I used it till it fell apart a couple of years ago. This year my brother found a nearly identical version of it and gave it to me for my birthday. So a lot of emotional investment had gone into it and it was the first thing I was sad about.

Antony, thank you so much for finding it and making sure I got it back.

10. The tall man with tattoos and ponytail near Highbury Place who helped me look through hedges and bushes the next day, as I thought I would take a chance and try finding more stuff, given that bits and pieces had turned up in the area.

11. The many, many people who took a few minutes of their own lives to help me look over hedges, in bins, and along the streets.

12. The security staff at work who not only promptly informed me that my keys and ID had been returned but also were kind and generous with their sympathy.

13. My swim coach who reminded me that thiefs are professionals and there was little I could have done to stop it. Also that swimming would clear my head and stop me worrying. And thank you for not killing me by recognising that I was too frazzled to maintain balance, but with enough pent up energy to do laps.

14. The cop on Upper Street who reminded me to be glad because noone had been hurt and that things/documents can be replaced.

I realise that in normal scheme of things, many of these people were simply doing their jobs. But they could have been grumpy or abrupt or unkind and gotten their job done. For example, so the locksmith could have just replaced the locks without trying to make me feel better; the police could have been just as effective without the unfailing patience and kindness. But they made that extra effort.

Even more people acted out of the kindness of their hearts to help a stranger recover her belongings, or to try to comfort and aid someone.

Thats over a dozen wonderful human beings for that one lousy thief! I could be angry and upset, but I think it makes more sense to be grateful for all that is good in humanity, and for the fact that it obviously supersedes the bad in sheer numbers.

Thank you - universe - for this timely reminder!

Deception: Some Thoughts

2009-11-20T10:42:00.002Z

I have been thinking about deception quite a bit recently.

As children, we grew up in the smoke-and-mirrors world of international espionage thanks to my father’s career in the government. In that world, deception was the norm: people were never who they said they were; information was always suspect, to be double and treble checked with multiple sources before it could be believed; potential friends were treated with suspicion until they proved their loyalty.

And yet, perhaps because of the lies that constantly surrounded us, as a family we grew up with absolute honesty. Perhaps because, as my parents have since pointed out, dishonesty even in small matters like taking a detour on the way home from school to grab an ice-cream could place our lives in danger. The worst trouble we ever got into with our parents was never for the wild, crazy things we did as teenagers (generally those just made my father laugh, or worse still, worry that we were “geeks” because we weren’t raising enough hell). The worst reprimands and consequences were for those little white lies that most kids take for granted.

There was just one rule: Information had its own restrictions and so not everything could be shared by everyone at all times, but deception stopped at the main door to our home.

Over the past few months, I have thought about deception repeatedly. Why people choose to deceive each other, especially when there is no greater tactical or strategic motive? Worse, why they choose to deceive the people they are apparently closest to: family, partners, children? And worst of all, why do they choose to deceive themselves?

I can understand – and perhaps take for granted – that humans deceive each other. But perhaps like Chanakya, and thanks to my upbringing, I believe that lies told in service of a greater good have their role in society. An intelligence officer deceives the enemy, lies and cheats and betrays for the good of his/her own people and nation. Despite all talk of the global village, and nebulous ideals of brotherhood of all humanity, there is virtue in such deception, as it is carried out at great personal risk (and cost) and for very little personal gain.

In contrast, there is little virtue in lying and cheating people that one loves. And yet as statistics repeatedly tell us, people deceive and betray their spouses and partners with a regularity that is distressing. There is a special horror to this, beyond the banal but significant risks of sexual transmission of disease, and other physical ramifications.

There is the material and emotional fall out when the deception comes to light: changes in marital status with all its economic and social corollaries, the anguish of the betrayed partner, the sorrow inflicted on other members of the family. How ironic that all of these are results of ending deception rather than its continuation.

But then there is a strange added phenomenon: there is also the shattering of the self-deception that often people impose on themselves. The cheating partner must confront his/her own idiocy in believing that any deception can be maintained indefinitely and the deceived party must question their own collusion with the deception. Children of such homes learn not the honesty within relationships but rather the hypocrisy that their parents demonstrate in their domestic lives. How different from my childhood world of smoke-and-mirrors!

Deception in espionage is a game, with various parties aware of the rules and consequences. One reason for the need for utter honesty within our family was an early recognition that governments use its officials (and citizens) as pawns, to be sacrificed with ease and relative nonchalance. Perhaps, because of this, in espionage, there is also a sense of respect for the enemy: its just a game, nothing personal!

But deception in “normal” life is personal. And perhaps that is why its greatest casualty is the sense of self. The deceived must not only recognise that they have been lied to and cheated, but also question why they were not trustworthy enough to be let into the secret: Why having loved a person were they left out of their partner or parent's unhappiness? And then there are the awful doubts over what else they have been deceived about!

But perhaps because of the shattering of self-worth, self-deception is the worst of them all. Long ago, I volunteered at a hotline for women in distress. Some of the women who called were being physically abused, but many others were facing what was euphemistically categorized as “relationship issues”: partners who had grown distant and remote, who were unfaithful, or in some way had stopped making the callers happy.

I remember being shocked initially at how deeply the callers deceived themselves. No matter how unhappy they were, they would rationalise their situation with the most clichéd of statements: “he is a good provider,” “he is a good father,” “he really does care,” "he will never do it again," and so on.

In an early training session, one of the senior counsellors explained that our job was to just listen, not to offer solutions or advice. And over coffee, she told me that she had come to accept that most of the callers would never leave their miserable situations, preferring the safety and security of the unhappiness they knew to the uncertainty of finding something new.

I was reminded of that comment recently, while thinking of this topic. And of the time I watched animals being brought into a nature reserve in Africa. These animals were from zoos and circuses, and had lived most of their lives in cages. And yet when that door was opened, and they could see the veldt beyond, they did not leap for that freedom. Instead they cowered at the very end of the cage where they had suffered their imprisonment and possible mistreatment. Even the fear of fire or sound of gunshots would not change their instinct to remain in their cages.

In espionage, the deceiver and the deceived are like two beasts of prey, hunting, stalking, evading. But the many people who deceive themselves, not only in relationships, but also jobs, lifestyles, entire lives, are like those animals, cowering in their misery rather than taking the risk of finding happiness. Like those animals, the deceiver and the deceived cower in their cages, but unlike those animals, they can't ever be drawn out: as humans, they carry their cages with them.

Perhaps that is why I am struck by Chanakya’s idea of anvikshaki knowledge: self-knowledge. Not in an easy new-agey way but one acquired by remorselessly facing up to oneself in all our darkness and brutality. Without it, we can not only never find happiness, but shall never stop being deceived in the worst possible way: by ourselves.

On beauty: mothers and daughters

2009-11-14T10:52:00.001Z

This past week was my mother’s birthday. I called to wish her in the morning and then headed to work.

On the way to the tube stop, a strange thing happened: I caught a glimpse of myself in a shop window and was startled enough to stop and stare at the reflection. Somehow, for the first time in my life, I reminded myself of my mother. Not resembled her, but somehow echoed her. And that was bizarre enough.

When I was a child, I was fascinated by my mother: she was beautiful and glamorous in that old-style movie star way. People would stare at her but rarely approached her, not only because we lived in a conservative society where she was a scion of a well-known family in the region, but also because there was something intimidating about her beauty. Even in kindergarten, friends would sigh every time she appeared at the school gates – all silks and chiffons and warm perfumed cuddles. “Your mother is soooooooo beautiful,” they would whisper in awe.

Early in my childhood, I realised that my mother’s kind of beauty was not only extraordinarily rare but also beyond my reach. In any case, everyone said that I resembled my father, and while he is handsome, it isn’t much help being a little girl and being told that one looks like a man!

So early on I rebelled: not in any overt way, but by simply refusing to take on the trappings of femininity and beauty. And quite early on, and thanks to my mother who was unfailingly proud of me, I realised that I had something extraordinary too: a brain that worked in ways that were unusual and powerful. As early as elementary school, I had decided that instead of the beauty of the family, I would be the brains. At least that I could achieve on my own steam.

At sixteen, someone took a photograph of me at a party and my mother was genuinely thrilled: “I have a beautiful daughter,” she exclaimed over and over again, putting that photograph in a frame. I didn’t believe her then. Tomboyish and bookish by turns, beauty was just as unattainable in my teens as when I was a child.

Then in my early twenties, I fell in love a man who I believed was a connoisseur of feminine beauty. Perhaps he was poor at communication or just deeply insecure, but during one alcohol-laced conversation, he told me that while I was “extremely attractive,” I would never count as “beautiful.” It was an affirmation of what I had always believed, and yet it hurt. Nothing he ever said afterwards to explain or make up, could undo that initial hurt.

In the years that followed, I single-mindedly pursued the goal of becoming the “brain,” eventually with a degree of success. And then, increasingly, I found that people were intimidated by the knowledge I had steadily and painstakingly acquired, by my ability to out-reason them.

And after the first flush of power that ability to intimidate gave me, I started to question it. I remembered the remote glamour that accompanies beauty and didn’t want the same reaction for my brain. Instead I began to search ways to inspire not intimidate. Over time, it is a skill I have acquired to some proficiency, and in the past few years, I have slowly gotten better at it: I can see that in my daily life.

Over the same period, my hankering for beauty has also fallen by the wayside. Perhaps that is only a natural corollary of deliberately trying to shed an ego that prides itself on intelligence and knowledge and on deliberate and consistent attempts at superiority, and instead focussing on excellence.

This is why I was stunned to see the reflection in the shop window. The woman who looked back at me was frighteningly good looking. Perhaps she was not glamorous in that movie star way like my mother, but still shockingly arresting, perhaps even intimidating, in her looks. Since then I have started noticing the way people “check” me out on the street, in cafes and pubs, in shops. They often wear the same arrested expression that I remember from my childhood, the one that my mother evoked. And sometimes, they approach me (no protective social barriers for me!) with curiosity and yet hesitation, as if expecting to be rebuffed.

My women friends (including my sister) laugh at me when I tell them of this strange new phenomenon. “You’re the only one who doesn’t notice she is beautiful,” my sister tells. “You’re crazy,” one of my oldest and closest friends exclaimed the other day, telling me (for the first time) that even that hyper-critical lover from my twenties couldn’t keep his eyes off me when I entered a room; this time I believe her.

My mother would also laugh when she reads this. She will call me to point out all the beautiful women in the family and wonder why I should expect to be different (she has done that before). For the first time, I remember that I also look like my paternal grandmother, and she was an accredited beauty of her times.

Sometimes I wish I hadn’t doubted myself for so long. But then perhaps that is good: convinced for years that I could not be beautiful, I have nurtured my brain; wracked by insecurity since my childhood, I have learned to identify with the underdog and have (hopefully) escaped the horrors of hubris. Those are not mean achievements for half a human life!

I also think I understand why I begin to look like my mother: some how, without trying, I have found the same confidence that my mother has always radiated, full of warmth and happiness, and a bubbling enthusiasm for life.

And that is a gift from her that is impossible to match, no matter how hard I try. Even for the rest of my life.

Happy birthday, mum!

On Pity: Thoughts on the Past Week

2009-11-04T13:42:00.000Z

For the first time in my life, this past week I felt pity. It may sound strange as the word is so commonplace and yet it was profound experience.

As a writer, I am fascinated by the near impossible challenge of capturing human experience in words. It is the ultimate paradox: to attempt to capture the subtleties, complexities and vastness of human experience with materials and tools that are inherently inadequate and ill-suited to the job.

This means that I am always astounded when I grasp the meaning of a particular word. That is always an exhilarating moment of epiphany, when a commonly used word or phrase takes on new and powerful emotional resonance and understanding. It is a flash of insight into a word’s original use. Those moments are like an instant journey through human history into the very dawn of time, to that first moment when that emotion was felt and expressed by some anonymous human ancestor.

It is also a strangely mystical experience: as if for that instant I am connected to the entire unfathomable spectrum of humanity, from its very origins to my own. In that instant there is magic: of sudden understanding of how extraordinary the human mind is, and how extraordinary our journey through time and space has been as a species.

And while mysticism and evolution are not two words that normally go together, these moments provide a strangely personal glimpse into evolution: of how we humans are different from other sentient beings; of how extraordinary that very first moment of feeling a particular emotion must have been for that original ancestor; of the power of human emotions and the extraordinary hubris of attempting to articulate it in language.

For the first time in my life, I felt an emotion that I could identify only as pity.More importantly, for the very first time, I had a new understanding of that commonly used term (even more so in modern Britain, where it seems everything from a spilled cup of tea to a car accident is carelessly lumped together as “pity.”)

Yet what I experienced was something quite exceptional: first, of what the word means, rooted as it is in Latin, in pietas, as in duty. That is not duty as in a burden, or insistence on doing something right or anything at all under duress, but rather as duty when something unfortunate must still be done.

On looking up the word I found further explanation in the dictionary: “a feeling of sorrow that inclines one to help or show mercy.”

See what I mean when words are inadequate? To help is quite different from showing mercy. And yet, in its Latin sense, performance of duty would require a sense of mercy rather than helpfulness.

As I pondered the meaning of pity, I was struck by the following image: compassion or sympathy is when upon seeing a wounded, suffering being, one feels compelled to assist and ease its suffering.

Pity is what one feels when that wounded being is beyond all aid and we can do no more but feel a strange mixture of sadness and repulsion at its suffering.

Of course this begs the question: who excites our pity? Why do I not feel pity for those suffering in Gaza or the Congo or Darfur? Why do those weak, suffering, wounded people evoke my sympathy, compassion, sorrow and yet a grudging admiration and solidarity? Perhaps it is because of the sense of resistance and dignity that they bring to their calamitous lives; a sense of self that is asserted by their very determined efforts to survive the quotidian horrors that surround them.

No, they do not deserve pity, because they require no mercy. All by themselves, they exercise a powerful personal and collective agency despite the odds that face them.

Which then brings me back to the object of my pity: Pity diminishes the dignity of the one who receives it. The object of pity requires mercy from the strong because like that wounded animal that is beyond our aid, its pain is its only sense of self; its weakness is its only expression of identity. Even worse, the object of pity can not be saved or helped; the only mercy one can offer is to step gingerly, carefully, to avoid contagion, around and beyond it.

For the first time in my life, I have felt pity and understood the word. It is neither an emotion nor a word that I would ever like to repeat again.

Skeletons in the Closet: How Many More? Update

2009-10-08T18:35:00.001+01:00

As if this morning's news were not nauseating enough, apparently Nico Sarkozy - yes, him of the model wife and high heeled shoes fame - found Mitterrand's tell all "autobiographical novel" with lurid details of paying Thai boys for sex and orgasmic descriptions of being turned on by the "slave market" (Mitterrand's terms) not only acceptable but also: "courageous and talented."

Amongst the genius literary gems spouting from Mr. Mitterand's overheated, exploitative, twisted pen is this one: "All these rituals of the market for youths, the slave market excited me enormously ... the abundance of very attractive and immediately available young boys put me in a state of desire."

So Mr. Mitterand was turned on by a slave market of nubile adolescent Asians presented for his consumption! What precisely is Mr. Sarkozy's personal turn on? Shall that be genocide in Rwanda which he was too late to conduct with his usual over-hyped enthusiasm? Or is it merely hosing down by police of Algerian and Moroccan origin youths?

At one level, I am glad that the Euro-American hypocrisy at various levels is being exposed by the sordid Polanski saga. It is a reminder of that old colonial maxim that far too many of us "empire is long over" types forget: yes the white man teaches morality to all and sundry while making sure the genocides are carried out by the weapons he sells; that modern slave trade continues with his valuable euros/dollars/pounds; that there are two sets of rules - one for the powerful and the other for the exploited. And all through, there is the usual imperial conceit of being "civilized" - oh the travails of the white man's burden!

Only problem: all trappings of the empire won't change the simple fact: the emperor has no clothes. And regardless of what Carla Bruni fancies, that isn't a pretty sight!

Skeletons in the Closet: How Many More?

2009-10-08T10:38:00.003+01:00

When the Roman Polanski story broke, I pretty much ignored it: A paedophile, albeit a very successful and famous one, was finally brought to book and about time. Then the media circus started, led by Polanski's equally or more successful and famous friends who insisted that "genius" was beyond mortal reaches of the law; that he had "suffered" already by losing his wife to a grisly murder and his mother to the Holocaust; that sex with a child was consensual because she hadn't fought; that he had paid for his mistakes; that too much time had passed (why didn't that apply to Nazi war criminals?). There are many aspects to this case that are ethically disturbing and politically dubious, and although I can't possibly consider all aspects, I am upset enough by the case to pitch in my two bits:

One of Polanski's passionate defenders is Bernard-Henri Levy. That in itself should indicate some of the historico-political context of this case, not in the least the historical European unease and religious-racial ideological postures surrounding the Polanski saga: Levy has been also one of the cheerleaders for indiscriminate bombing of Gaza and Lebanon. It does appear that for Levy, the Holocaust provides a perpetual "get out of jail, free" card for all moral and ethical misconduct, as long as the perpetrator can invoke some personal suffering at the hands of the Nazis.

Of course, much of Europe bears the guilt for the Holocaust like its own perpetual cross, obsessing on that single event in history and ignoring/erasing its guilt regarding all other genocides: never mind the killings Europeans did in Africa, Asia and Latin America; it is the fact the Nazis killed fellow Europeans that really feeds this racist morally-devoid cross-bearing. And just as the Holocaust provides the over-arching narrative on Israel-Palestine, privileging the destruction of the European Jewry (who "suffered") over the nameless Palestinians who were expelled, raped, incarcerated, killed, and still continue to "suffer" their torment, Polanski's individual experience of the Holocaust privileges his suffering over that of the children he has molested, abused, raped. And yes, lets not forget that this appears not to be an isolated case, as the "genius" director has had little compulsion in flaunting (possibly) legal but ethically disturbing sex with other underage individuals: Natassja Kinski, for example, was 15 to Polanski's 45-plus at the time of their liason but his defenders argue that in France, Kinski was over the age of consent, never mind the fact that a 45 year old man chasing adolescents qualifies as a predator and paedophile in all functional moral and ethical universes.

But there is another disturbing aspect to the rich and famous coming to Polanski's defense. Levy - not surprisingly - was quick off the mark, starting a petition for Polanski's release and co-signed by many of his literary and artistic luminati mates. The list reads like a veritable who's-who of a certain generation: Salman Rushdie, Milan Kundera, Isabelle Adjani, Diane von Fustenberg. Many on the list are my childhood heroes: people I admired in magazine photos as a child, read as an adolescent, desperately imitated in my early experiments with writing.

In case of Rushdie and Kundera, they are still my all-time favourite writers, whose incisive minds and luminous prose (to quote Rushdie himself) I admire and to which I aspire. In case of von Fustenberg, I adored her dresses as a little kid in the 70s and seem to have acquired a wardrobe full as an adult - even today, a DvF is my ultimate confidence-booster, personal armour, capable of putting a smile on my face even on the worst of days. These aren't just dresses: they are childish dreams spun out of multicolour silk.

Another parallel petition unites cinema and art stars ranging from Martin Scorcese, Bernardo Bertolucci, Paul Auster, Jeremy Irons, Harrison Ford,Debra Winger, and of course that other glowing example of sexual predation: Woody Allen. Can I ever watch those well loved films of my childhood again without thinking of the potential depravity of its creator?

Of course, take away the tag of being petitions in defense of Polanski, and signatories row also reads like a guest list: if you were to throw an authentic retro Studio 54 bash, pretty much all of the people on those petitions would need to be invited. Including of course Polanski himself!

And that's the giveaway: this is a bunch of friends protecting each other. Regardless of the money they make, the fame they have, the literary and artistics "genius" they possess, the influence they wield - these petition co-signers are no more than a bunch of frat boys protecting one of their own. Unfortunately, they are standing up not for a mate who got terribly drunk and trashed someone's garden on a rowdy Saturday night. These shining examples of nearly a half-century of art are closing ranks to protect a child-rapist!

As if all this were not stomach churning enough, the French polity has dug up dirt on Frederic Mitterand, the country's culture minister, who has been - along with Levy - one of Polanski's most impassioned defenders. Apparently monsieur minister has a taste for little boys! He not only has indulged his twisted desires by paying for sex with children in Thailand, but in a "literary-artistic" twist perhaps inspired by the great genius Polanski himself has also written about it in his 2005 memoirs.

I wonder if Mitterand also qualifies for the Polanski defense: that he is a "genius" and valuable to the arts; that he too has "suffered"; that if it wasn't violent - and it couldn't have been since he paid for it - the act must have been consensual; that little Thai children seduced the poor old man; that he is too important to France to be brought to book? Perhaps my own prejudices are showing but I find it quite revealing of a culture and its ethos that Mitterand's memoirs, published in 2005, raised no eyebrows. That an entire nation just accepted his self-confessed abuse of children as logical droit de seigneur of a privileged, wealthy, powerful white man over the poor, starving children of the third world! Or perhaps it is another take on that old Holocaust/Empire/race card again: after all he was raping/paying for children "over there" and not abusing perfect little white French kids from nice families!

Having read through Mitterand's case, I am left wondering: how many more of Polanski's passionate defenders have indulged their paedophilic urges and gotten away with it? Suddenly, the signatories on that petition list seem a lot more sinister. Are they just frat boys protecting one of their own, or are they also guilty of similar crimes? How many more have raped children in their own lands or - with even greater impunity - in the third world? How many more closets shall be spewing skeletons in the next few weeks?

Finally I am saddened - although perhaps not surprised - that so many of my childhood idols not only have feet of clay, but were perhaps never worthy of my admiration.

White, Middle-Class Male Seeks "Reality"

2009-07-25T09:55:00.006+01:00

First of all a confession: of all columnists spouting their views in British mainstream media, I believe Johann Hari to be one of the best. His arguments are well researched and well made. Plus, his liberal (as opposed to left-of-centre) views are refreshing in a world where opinions of everything from the colour of Michelle Obama's clothes to piracy off the coast of Somalia are tainted by ideological petrification and intellectual sloppiness.

Which is why I was disappointed to read his piece on reality and the contemporary novelist this morning. Suddenly I realised that Hari's views are not much different from the British mainstream.

First of all there is the ridiculous assumuptions that "reality" is some how "over there" - in lands far away like India and Africa but not in the middle-class havens of London, Manchester, Glasgow. More problematic is the implicitly classist conceit that this over-there-reality must be about war/poverty/violence.

Then there is a more troubling aspect: Hari blithely describes the location of Arvind Adiga's new novel as "typical Indian city." While, this might sound like nitpicking to some but most Britons take great pride in explaining the uniqueness and difference of the various parts of their tin-pot island. Thus London is automatically assumed to be world apart from Manchester. And god forbid if you ever describe Glasgow or Edinburgh as "a typical British city" to either a Scot or an Englishman! Yet a country of over a billion people, seventeen official languages, every major religion can somehow be reduced to "typical". I would LOVE to know what qualifies as a "typical Indian city" - Mumbai? New Delhi? Guwahati? Hyderabad? Patna? But hey, the white man will establish the "uniqueness" of his location but "over there" is just all a "typical" massive (w)hole.

An aside here: If Adiga's first book's superficiality (most likely a result of an over-arching ambition to write the "Indian" novel rather than just a brilliant one) is any indication, it is precisely his short-hand rendering of the Said-ian "typical" Indian characteristics that make him such an "exhilirating" writer for the likes of Hari. After all, why complicate your life - and reading - with ideas, views, insights into the "non-typical" India or any other "over-there" that you would acquire from the likes of a Mahashweta Devi or an Amitav Ghosh? After all their litarary "reality" gets a little too uncomfortably confrontational for white British middle-class men with pretensions of liberality.

(Mind you - for those of you ready to jump down my throat - I am not saying that Hari is racist! Unfortunately all of us have racist assumptions, most of which we deny or are unaware of. And to paraphrase Ella Shohat, its the "unthinking" racism that is the most insidous and dangerous).

Then there is the glowing recommendation of Adiga's Boyle-like attempt to write like a "journalist" about what he doesn't know. Without even going into the merits of Adiga's research and its literary rendering, Hari's statement itself is problematic.

Having worked as a journalist in Latin America and Asia, I have despaired of far too many of these well-meaning journalists who "research" places they write about without ever bothering to learn the language, understanding the culture, or indeed caring about the context of the stories they email back to the publications back home. Worse still, all these purportedly objective journalistic accounts are not only deeply judgemental and flawed, they actively construct views, opinions of the "over-there" by elision and omission, and thus aid and abet trade, diplomatic and military policies that countries implement.

So journalists are hardly the benchmark of those who go out to learn and write about "reality." And while it has become fashionable to complain about the deterioration in journalistic standards in the past decade, Western "journalistic" standards were always deeply flawed when it came to covering "reality" in over-there-lands! In fact, novelists would be better served if they focussed on particular subjective realities, providing depth, context, integrity and compassion to their stories, rather than imitating the falsely objective, exploitative, limited viewpoints that journalism requires!

Finally, Hari's paean to the apparent resuscitation of the "realist" novel by Adiga (and I assume others of his ilk) is particularly grating. The "realist" novel was a product of a particular time, place and culture, all of which are part and parcel of Hari's cultural inheritance. However the realist novel was also an aspect of the intellectual imperialism that wreaked - and continues to wreak - as yet unacknowledged havoc on colonized cultures across the globe.

Realism may have served a particular purpose in Europe and America, but it represents a form of intellectual and creative colonisation beyond these geographical/political and cultural boundaries. For far too long, writers from Africa, Asia, Latin America were told to write in "realist" forms and forced to eschew non-realist, non-linear narrative traditions that their own cultures had developed in the centuries prior to colonization. "Realism" was enlightened, modern, intellectually superior to the non-linear, non-realist narrative traditions of Africa, Asia, Latin America, we were told constantly and consistently. Colonised writers took up the form, to prove they were as good as their colonial masters, to attain intellectual credibility and readership, to show the masters that they too "could"!! This is why Marquez, Borges, Rushdie had such an impact on their home cultures - they unshackled the novel from its colonial-realist shackles, demonstrating that "reality" could be narrated in myriad ways and not only the one foisted upon us by our former colonial masters.

For writers from postcolonial nations who are still struggling to overcome the far-longer lasting legacies of intellectual and creative colonisation, Hari's views are not deeply familiar but also depressingly common. Its just horribly disappointing to read Hari espouse them.

As I said at the beginning, Hari is one of my favourite British columnists and I look forward to reading his work. And yet this morning, I was forcefully reminded that just as electing a bi-racial president has not made America post-racial, overt professions of liberalism has not removed the "unthinking Euro-centrism" or the long standing cultural, intellectual, creative imperialism implicit in British public discourse.

On writing, literature, politics: An Interview

2009-07-17T15:06:00.005+01:00

The July 2009 issue of the ArtCiencia carries the text of an email interview that Dr. Nilanshu Agarwal conducted with me last year. The interview covers a host of topics including postcoloniality, literature, and writing.

Enjoy!

The East, The West And Sex: Same Schpiel, Different Day

2009-06-23T09:56:00.004+01:00

As an "eastern" woman who has lived nearly half her life in the "west," I can admit to a personal interests in debates that tackle issues of gender, race, colonialist history and sex. After all it is an immensely rich vein to mine for political, social, emotional narratives. So I was obviously intrigued by a book review emailed to me about Richard Bernstein's The East, The West, And Sex: A History of Erotic Encounters. After all, the book had been described as "provocative and intriguing," (NYTimes), and "wide-ranging and astute" (NY Review of Books).

Funnily enough, although the review got over 350 responses within 24 hours – much of them virulently racist and misogynist – the voice of the “Eastern woman” is missing - perhaps because the book (and the review) says little we haven’t heard from lovers, acquaintances, strangers.

I remember that I decided within three months of living in NYC as a teenager that I would never date two categories of men: one, those who professed an interest in India; and two, those who had travelled to India. The first, I had discovered, very quickly were looking for their personal fantasy of the "Kamasutra girl," an impossible female caricature who was at once intellectually inferior, psychologically submissive and sexually voracious. The second category of men, I admit, seems to be a vast generalisation at first glance. Yet I realised that those who had refused to sample the local flavours at an Indian brothel during trip - due to an innate sense of decency, social or moral qualms, or plain good old upbringing - still nursed the same fantasy: the afore-mentioned Kamasutra girl. They want the final souvenir of their travels East, sex with the Oriental fantasy!

Unfortunately, the first dozen pages of the book made me realise something worse: Bernstein is far worse than the two categories mentioned above. In addition to travelling and living in the “East” (primarily China) and holding his personal Oriental fantasy, he is also of the long line of apologists who attempt to explain their own deeply held beliefs about race, sex and power in apparently “rational” terms. While a quick re-read of Said/Fanon/Shohat would be enough to rebut pretty much every single word of this book, let me just point out a few of the not so “provocative” and long-held notions that Bernstein holds forth on:

1) Bernstein’s “East” – and his pathetic little diatribe against Said notwithstanding – is blithely explained as anything ranging from Morocco to Japan. (Note to white, male writers trying that old “I know better” argument against Said: they not only make you look idiotic, irrational, unlearned but also don’t work in the post-colonial era).

2) He conveniently constructs a dichotomy between so-called "Christian" culture and the "culture of the harem." Nice! Except not all of the “East” had harems! Moreover, and with classic sleight of hand, he implicitly includes "Jewish" cultures in the same "western" rubric, conveniently forgetting the far larger “eastern” Jewish populations. But to acknowledge that minor historical detail would not quite hold with the idealised, and politically expedient, notions of the “Judeo-Christian West” against the Eastern “culture of the harem.”

3) In his grand Orientalist sweep of the “East,” Bernstein must – and does – overlook some basic cultural facts that don’t quite support his personal fantasist agenda. While I will not speak for the grand “East” and focus only on India, his false dichotomy of Eastern “harem” vs Western “monogamy” requires him to skip not only the many monogamous cultures that developed in the "East" prior to the white man's “discovery” of the region(s), but he also pointedly refuses to acknowledge the various polyandrous cultures (such as that of the Himalayas). Guess the eastern woman with a harem of men does not quite fit the Orientalist fantasy of the submissive!

4) Another overt exclusion is that of relationships between “eastern” women and “western” men that do not fit his over-arching colonialist paradigm. Not surprisingly then, there are no “anecdotes” of the likes of Begum Samroo – the famed Witch of Sardhana – who rose thanks to her political acumen from a courtesan to the ruler of her own principality. After all, as the transformation of the courtesan to the nautch girl in India shows, and contrary to all pretensions of 20th century Euro-American feminism, the “west” could not until recently conceive of public roles for women that did not include sex-for-sale. And this is why Begum Samroo – with her series of European mercenary/lover-employees, and finally a French hired-gun-turned-husband – does not make it in Bernstein’s fantasy.

5) Perhaps the saddest and yet the most offensively Orientalist aspect of Bernstein’s argument revolves around the apparent lack of guilt regarding sex in “Eastern” cultures. Again, he conflates everything from Islam to Hinduism to Confucianism in one large monolith, betraying not only his firmly Orientalist agenda but also an incredible lack of knowledge and understanding. This is particularly sad because there is a grain of truth in Bernstein’s thinking: most non-Biblical traditions do not centre on notions of a fall from grace. Unfortunately, this argument is buried – quite properly – under Bernstein’s slipshod reasoning and sweeping generalisations, especially as he chooses to use this lack of sexual guilt as a handy excuse for the sexual exploitation of “eastern” women by “western” men: after all goes the unspoken rationale, why shouldn't a woman be exploited when she lacks the moral compass of her western female (Judeo-Christianic) counterparts!

If we consider solely the three pre-Islamic Indian traditions, Bernstein’s reasoning is demonstrated as half-baked and less than half-informed. Yes, the Hindu/Buddhist/Jain traditions attach no guilt to sex. Indeed, the Hindu goal of the four purusharthas includes kama (material and physical pleasure). Unfortunately this is not automatically a call to non-monogamous relations or indeed grounds for the “harem” cultures. What Bernstein conveniently ignores are the philosophical/moral rules that require the pursuit of kama to be about quality not quantity: the “East” may lack the Bible, but it has no trouble privileging the gourmet over the gourmand.

Finally, there is a far more troublesome aspect of Bernstein’s apologia: the ghost of Haditha haunts these pages, reminding the discerning reader (and more importantly, the Asian woman reader) that this same rationale has long led to, and justified, the rape, torture and murder of “Eastern” women. While Bernstein chooses to focus contemporary East-West sexual encounters on prostitution in Far East Asia, he conveniently ignores that the same thinking – non-western women as objects of fantasy and thus less than fully human – also continues to drive “western” men, especially Bernstein’s idealised virile, colonialist types, to the excesses we have seen in Afghanistan and Iraq. And that makes Bernstein’s book neither “enlightening” nor “provocative” but simply another in a long line of Orientalist apologia, based on half-truths and prejudices.

New Story Out Now

2009-06-12T18:48:00.004+01:00

The summer issue of The Drawbridge is now out. Available online as well at major bookstores, the issue carries writing by Nobel Laureate Jose Saramago and the Latin American great Mario Vargas Llosa. It also has a new translation of a short story by Sadat Hasan Manto, as well as contemporary writers: Vicenzo Ruggiero, Etgar Keret.

It also carries a short story that I wrote last year.

I will write more about the issue and my story soon. But for the moment, believe me, its got some really great writing - I am still thinking about the Vargas Llosa piece that is a cross between a book review and a rumination on the erotic, repression and life itself. Actually have to confess that I read the piece and got kind of stuck at it. Its made me think and set off a whole range of questions and ideas - which I suppose what great writing should do.

So till I post my take on the new issue, I suggest you do some exploration and reading of your own at at the magazine's website.

Torture American Style: A Short Story

2009-04-22T10:48:00.002+01:00

Full disclosure: This piece was written immediately after the Abu Ghraib story broke. It was meant for an anthology on America and torture but never published: the publishers decided - I guess - it was a bit too controversial. Think its a good moment to share it what with the new torture memos being released:

Pentagon says response to controversial ad overwhelming

By: Jeffrey Dahmer

WASHINGTON, April 1: Pentagon officials announced today that the response to a controversial recruitment advertisement for women interrogators has been overwhelming.

Maj. Chuck Tarrington, spokesman for the Pentagon announced that the advertisement recruiting “all-American” female interrogators to assist in the nation’s war against terrorism had met with unprecedented success. “We have received over ten thousand applications in less than six weeks,” Tarrington said.

The advertisement formed part of the military´s recently expanded programme for highly aggressive interrogation techniques. The advertisement specifically asked for “all-American” women between the ages of 18 and 25, “of sound moral standing,” to work as civilian contractors on interrogation sites “in U.S. bases around the world.” The advertisement promised “special uniforms,” “trips to foreign countries,” and “position of power” as job perks to women who would ultimately be hired.

In recent months, under fire for using physical torture, the military has chosen to expand its use of women as part of its increasingly aggressive psychological interrogation tactics against terrorism suspects. United States prison camps in Guantanamo, Sudan and Phillipines have widely reported the use of sexual references including touching and wearing erotic clothing by female interrogators to break Muslim detainees, who consider it taboo to have close contact with women who aren’t their wives.

“Thongs, miniskirts and high heels are the standard uniform for women interrogators,” Terrence Haliburt, former Army colonel who commanded the Guantanamo detention camp for over two year explains. “And they are extremely effective.”

The advertisement has come under fire from equal opportunity groups. Willa Reese, president for Association for Equal Rights in the Military for Women of Colour (ERMWC) protests the “racial and sectarian discrimination practised by the programme.” “We understand that all-American is simply a code for white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant women. We feel that the conditions deny black and Hispanic women the right to serve the nation as well as to those who may be aligned with the Catholic church or other Christian movements,” she said.

Speaking on conditions of anonymity, a senior Pentagon official pointed out white, blonde women consistently produced better results in the detainee interrogation programme. “There is a certain image that these people have of America, and it makes better tactical sense to push forward on that front.”

One of the key backers for the Pentagon’s new interrogation programme is Senator Tim Wright, also president of the National Coalition of Christian Organizations, who justified the programme on moral and strategic grounds. “We are living the clash of civilizations, which is why we must use all available resources. And who better to defend our way of life than young women with strong moral convictions,” he said.

Human rights groups have also criticized the new programme. “The new tactics appropriately reject the use of torture. But they do nothing about cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, which is also prohibited by the Convention Against Torture,” says Jeremy Foster, legal advisor for the Human Rights Watch.

Pentagon officials have repeatedly defended the use of psychological interrogation tactics as more humane than those using physical force or torture. “U.S. forces treat all detainees and conduct all interrogations, wherever they may occur, humanely and consistent with legal obligations prohibiting torture,” Tarrington said.

Until recently, female interrogators played little or no part in the U.S.’s increasingly aggressive war on terrorism. However, the new programme will expand their role significantly. Tarrington said, “the new recruitment drive intends to ensure that female interrogators form at least 40 percent of the total corps.” He refused to explain what that would mean in sheer numbers. “The number of interrogators needed at any given time is determined by strategic and tactical considerations. There is no magic figure, unless of course its 34-28-36,” he said amidst peals of laughter from the audience.

Writing: Assumptions, Ethics, Boredom

2009-03-08T11:16:00.006Z

Last couple of weeks have been all about writing: On a personal level, I have a minor writers' block - not the kind that goes on forever, but the sort where ideas and sentences flicker in and out of consciousness, too vague, too fast, too out of reach to make sense. Having been in this state before, I am just getting on with things until the block dissipates: watching interminable hours of cinema, surfing the web for news through the night, reading whatever I can find including the nutritional information on food packaging. And then people wonder why so many writers are well-informed; what else can you do through these long hours of tedium while waiting for your mind to click into an articulate state?

On a social level, a stranger drama is unfolding. I keep running into people who find the idea of being a writer fascinating! So last week, on a date, the man kept asking me questions about what "inspired" me! Then I met some people for drinks, one of whom was an American woman who insisted on telling me how she admired writers because we were "so creative." And then, just to cap it all, the Guardian carried an entire article about Writers and Writing. Why anybody would care to know whether writing is joy or chore is beyond my comprehension. How many times do we ask cardiac surgeons whether their profession is a "joy or a chore"? Or a fireman? Or less dramatically but none the less logically, the postman?

None of this is new, of course. I have grown used to people assuming that being a writer means that I am any or all of the following:

1. An alcoholic/drug addict
2. Bohemian with unpaid bills and incapacity to manage personal finance
3. Social liberal (read: easily convinced to have indiscriminate sex with strangers)
4. Living the Vida Loca, with late soirees with free flowing intellectual conversation and copious amounts of alcohol (see #1) interspersed with writing in a freezing Parisian garret; how I am supposed pay for this is of course left unexplained.
5. Neurotic, psychotic, manic-depressive, purposefully seeking pain in my personal life (or may be thats just a male excuse for bad behaviour?) in order to find "inspiration." In this particular state, I am supposed to alternate between slashing my wrists and presumably writing with the seeping blood!

I always am met with disbelieving looks when I explain that writing is a job, albeit my dream one. As a child, I loved making up stories, and never could have imagined that I could do it as a career. For me, its like being paid for playing street cricket, or drawing on your mum's kitchen wall. There isn't much pain involved! Although it is hard work, just as playing street-cricket used to be; and the consequences aren't always fabulous. But at the end, that's all! (I think thats why that date last week didn't go well - I think he wanted a neurotic, bohemian, nympho!).

Which is why when a friend asked me about the Julie Myerson story, I was a bit shocked (full disclosure: I have never read her; and given my general lack of interest in contemporary British writing, hadn't heard of her either). Once I got the basic outline of the unfolding pathetic tale, however, I realised what my friend wanted to know wasn't what I thought of Myerson; she was trying to establish the outlines of my personal value system, and thus the limits of our friendship.

In writing a tell-all account of her son's encounter with drugs, Myerson had opened a can of worms for all writers. What my friend really wanted to know was if I would cannibalise our friendship; whether I would "betray" her in writing; in short, did I have a moral compass that could tell the difference between betrayal of a loved one and an addiction to writing.

I was a bit insulted at first. And saddened too. But then I think, she deserved (and so do others in my life) an answer. Writers are cannibals, no doubts. Or at least consumers of psychological carrion. But most of us are not immoral, unethical or automatically addicted to betrayal. Nor are most works of fiction - at least not the good ones - mere jazzed up memoirs and autobiographies. In fact, I find the constant questions on my writing being "autobiographical" quite insulting because they suggest that I have no imagination!

Most writers do not hurt those they love, or betray them in writing. Or perhaps it is better if I speak only for myself: I have in the past inadvertently hurt people close to me by writing on topics that leads the press or general public to question me or my lifestyle. When my first play was produced, my mother was asked invasively personal and stupid questions by the press. My father, like most fathers, hates when I write anything sexually graphic. But for most part, those closest to me have been aware that what I write is not intended to hurt, nor even about them. Even when particularly well constructed sentences - most often from my brother - are cannibalized into my writing, they are in completely different, fictional, contexts.

Most of my family and friends have long read my writing not to feel betrayal, but rather, to quote one of them, "to see how the reality they live with me is metamorphosed into something completely different."

Over the years I have grown better at protecting those I love. After my first novel, I started sealing away journals and diaries so I wouldn't be tempted to go find particular sentences that I felt were well constructed. For my second book, I refused to give the press access to my boyfriend at the time; a decision that led to particularly nasty insinuations by some journalists (pick from the assumptions list above). And with my last boyfriend, I took - at least for me - an extreme stance: I gave him the diaries I had written while we were together and told him to do what he wished with them. I felt that our privacy was the best and possibly only parting gift I could give him. I have yet to regret that decision!

Which is why the Myerson saga bothers me so much: she has betrayed her son by publishing what was a family matter. She has the right to write it of course - that is how writers come to grips with their thoughts, emotions, lives. But to publish it has been a betrayal of the son - and the family - she should have protected. And that is a betrayal she will have to live with - and pay for - for the rest of her days.

But she has also betrayed what she considers her profession/vocation/addiction. She has betrayed writing, which in its greatest form is about truth, not merely a subjective viewpoint. And it is about compassion and understanding of humans, both in our strength and frailty. By placing personal gain - of telling her story as the "right" one, of exerting a narrative control over her contentious relationship with her young son - she has betrayed that essential requirement for truth and compassion. And in doing so, she has also betrayed the rest of the writing community.

Thank You Yet Again, Mr Rushdie

2009-02-28T09:39:00.003Z

Last year, well before the now-ubiquitously adored Slumdog Millionaire was released, I promised myself that I would not add to the general hysteria. There were two reasons for it: the film promised to push every ideological and political button I have (for the record, it does!); and second, having followed similar mass marketing exercises about India before, I knew that all dissenting voices would be shouted down.

I wasn't wrong. The western media juggernaut has been extraordinary in hyping the film, but also at silencing all alternative opinion about the film. Much of British and American media in any case refuses to let an Indian writer/journalist comment on issues linked to India: our best hope recourse is to get a generally clue-less British-Indian or Indian-American holding forth in a manner that consistently repeats the immigration myth that so many of us from the South Asian subcontinent detest: "West is better, richer, modern; back home is poor, superstitious, backward."

The motives boldly ascribed to such criticism has been simplistic and offensively - albeit cleverly - racially coded: any criticism of the film by Indians must be rooted in nationalist pride and a corollary inferiority complex. And worse still, publications and journalists have declared with complete hubris and ignorance that of course Indians don't make such real movies because they would rather make and watch "escapist Bollywood fare." And to hell with the hundred years of Do Bigha Zameen, Traffic Signal, Chameli, and a hundreds of well made, mainstream, successful Bollywood films about the country's underbelly. Who cares about facts when the white man has spoken!

When the screen legend - and in my mind, one of the few Indians with the credibility and stature - to make the point, mildly took issue with the film, he was pilloried. Western journalists who knew little of Bachchan's trajectory and work, declared that he was "jealous" because he hadn't been included in the film; that he was a has-been; that he was delusional. Under the onslaught, Bachchan withdrew his very valid although poorly formulated remarks.

Which is why I am so grateful for Salman Rushdie's piece today in the Guardian. And once again must thank him for saying what many of us have wished to say but have known that it shall be shouted down, mocked, dismissed:

"What can one say about Slumdog Millionaire, adapted from the novel Q&A by the Indian diplomat Vikas Swarup and directed by Danny Boyle and Loveleen Tandan, which won eight Oscars, including best picture? A feelgood movie about the dreadful Bombay slums, an opulently photographed movie about extreme poverty, a romantic, Bollywoodised look at the harsh, unromantic underbelly of India - well - it feels good, right? And, just to clinch it, there's a nifty Bollywood dance sequence at the end. (Actually, it's an amazingly second-rate dance sequence even by Bollywood's standards, but never mind.) It's probably pointless to go up against such a popular film, but let me try.

The problems begin with the work being adapted. Swarup's novel is a corny potboiler, with a plot that defies belief: a boy from the slums somehow manages to get on to the hit Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and answers all his questions correctly because the random accidents of his life have, in a series of outrageous coincidences, given him the information he needs, and are conveniently asked in the order that allows his flashbacks to occur in chronological sequence. This is a patently ridiculous conceit, the kind of fantasy writing that gives fantasy writing a bad name. It is a plot device faithfully preserved by the film-makers, and lies at the heart of the weirdly renamed Slumdog Millionaire. As a result the film, too, beggars belief.

It used to be the case that western movies about India were about blonde women arriving there to find, almost at once, a maharajah to fall in love with, the supply of such maharajahs being apparently endless and specially provided for English or American blondes; or they were about European women accusing non-maharajah Indians of rape, perhaps because they were so indignant at having being approached by a non-maharajah; or they were about dashing white men galloping about the colonies firing pistols and unsheathing sabres, to varying effect. Now that sort of exoticism has lost its appeal; people want, instead, enough grit and violence to convince themselves that what they are seeing is authentic; but it's still tourism. If the earlier films were raj tourism, maharajah-tourism, then we, today, have slum tourism instead. In an interview conducted at the Telluride film festival last autumn, Boyle, when asked why he had chosen a project so different from his usual material, answered that he had never been to India and knew nothing about it, so he thought this project was a great opportunity. Listening to him, I imagined an Indian film director making a movie about New York low-life and saying that he had done so because he knew nothing about New York and had indeed never been there. He would have been torn limb from limb by critical opinion. But for a first world director to say that about the third world is considered praiseworthy, an indication of his artistic daring. The double standards of post-colonial attitudes have not yet wholly faded away."

Thank you, Sir Salman!

Random, Pointless but Totally Fun on a Lazy Sunday

2009-02-15T12:03:00.003Z

I should thank The Buddha Smiled for pointing me to the most ridiculously fun idea for a lazy Sunday morning. Its The Hero Factory, a website that allows you to make up your own super-hero alter-ego.

Mine is posted herewith. I wanted something a bit tougher but in the interest of complete honesty went with the first result! The "whipped" bit worries me a bit, but oh well, guess even super-heroines have bad days....

At least it cheered me up!!!