I picked up Mulk Raj Anand's "Coolie" and read the last chapter (I don't remember if when I had earlier read it, I had gotten to the last chapter, but I found it a very strong book). This time, it was almost physically painful. In a confused chaotic time (before independance), with a bunch of people fighting for independance, another bunch of people getting onto the british gravy train and the vast majority suffering, this man managed to isolate the very core of the inhumanity and hypocrisy of the society and convey it in simple, straightforward and beautiful language. The critique is still relevant today, with a new set of actors replacing the british.

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It reminded me of when I read Kazuo Ishiguro's "The Remains of the Day". Such incredible writing, that left me with a physical stomach ache.

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I found my Pondicherry CD , "Pondy Groove" which I was quite upset at having lost. Listening to it now. I mentioned it earlier on the blogs somewhere. It is quite a striking fun CD. If you care about music you should take the effort to check them out. If you're interested drop me a note.

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Sometimes (like after reading Coolie just now), I get into this state of mind where I feel that I really *get* this thing called 'life' and I am above it all. And then when I get into the hurly-burly of daily life and interacting with people, the conviction all vanishes and I'm back to being complex and confused. The point is not "how to preserve the feeling even in quotidian life" but that the feeling is not strong enough and therefore not true enough.

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Jiddu Krishnamurthi once said that for all his decades of teaching he was not aware of a single person reaching enlightenment as a result of it. I was reaching a book on Buddhism by Osho and interestingly it had something to say about the Buddha on the same lines. It is a beautiful passage but unfortunately too long for me to transcribe fully. Here is the gist: The gods are upset because after he becomes enlightened, Buddha feels it is the right thing to speak about it. They come to the Buddha with this argument:

"We have found one single, small argument. It is very small in comparison to all the arguments that go against it, but still we would like you to consider. Our argument is that you may be misunderstood by ninety-nine percent of the people, but you cannot say that you will be misunderstood by a hundred percent of the people. You have to give at least a little margin -- just one percent. That one percent is not small in this vast universe, that one percent is a big enough portion. Perhaps out of that one percent few will be able to follow the path. But even if one person in the whole universe becomes enlightened because of your speaking, it will be worth it.. << some more >>"

The Buddha listens and accepts that it is worth it, and the book says that over the course of his 42 years of teaching about a dozen people were enlightened.

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I'm off to Delhi for a week on Sunday

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Oceans Twelve

This movie is such a pleasure to watch, a real sensual experience. It is amazing -- there is a particular feel to the movie that pervades. It feels like the characters in the movie are consistent with the ambience, photography, cinematography, lighting .. it all just fits together..pretty cool. The feel is smooth, understated, casual.

There is so much going on, the movie is so tight that there is nothing redundant. In fact there is perhaps too much that they try to squeeze in, and you have to watch the movie twice to get all the scences. The surprise twist in the end is somewhat flat, a letdown. Its the kind of movie where reading a good review of the movie which peels apart the layers and is able to analyze why the movie is so cool is almost as much fun as watching the movie itself (this sure ain't that review though!).

PS: I just checked the Wikipedia entry and apparently the critics were not so kind to this movie. Oops. Well.

Killing a tree

Shobha De is like a chalk squeaking on a blackboard.
A long time back she called (pejoratively) Medha Patkar and Arundhati Roy the "Narmada sisters": bitchyness of breathtaking lack of grace and decency.
In a recent interview she airily told the interviewer '60 is the new 40, you know' -- like she invented the line.
She fits a stereotype -- good taste and elegance, great refinement and sensitivity, having to deal with the burden of the great unwashed of India, awful sex-starved men ogling upper class women, dirty roads and lack of order. Oh to escape to Nice or Davos where you can get a decent pasta.

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Fake Steve Jobs has a terrible Microsoft promotional video - cringe Nandita !!
http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2008/04/this-is-why-we-love-microsoft.html

Credit Card Woes - 2

As expected, this has become a mess and time sink:

May 9th: I sent them the dispute resolution form. By Speedpost -- because they did not have a phone number on the form which is needed to send by courier (and the address was a PO Box which courier companies do not deliver to).

May 13th: I called HDFC. They said that they didn't recieve it.
I went down to the Post Office where I sent it from and enquired. They don't have tracking facility so they gave me the phone number of the GPO and I had to call them to track. After several trails (engaged) I reached someone who told me it was delivered on 12th.
I called HDFC again and told them this. They asked me fax it. Why should I ? I sent it as per their instructions, they received it, to the best of my information, why should I waste my time. I don't have convenient access to a fax machine. If its more reliable to fax, why didn't they have that on the form and I could have taken some trouble to fax it the first time and be done with it.

May 16th: I called them twice. They haven't received it yet. Finally I told them that I won't send it again and I won't pay the charges. The chap put me on hold, came back and told me it would take a few days for them to process and for it to show up in the system so I should call back after a couple of days. So why did the earlier people tell me to fax it again, if its not that it didn't reach them ?
After the fuss they made earlier about telling me the merchants names, this time they did tell me the merchants' names (without me asking for it). Tata Indicom and IDEA.
So probably if they had reacted quickly, Tata Indicom and IDEA might have been able to stop the usage of the money as phone calls and even caught the person maybe. As it is, its 10 days later (and frustration and anxiety on my side), and not a single action to track down the perpetrators.

Oh I forgot -- the bright side, they responded with fantastic speed and sent me another card. Thank you, I'll certainly continue using HDFC cards going forward.

Welcome to my life Mr. Kafka.

Bush gives up golf in solidarity to soldiers :

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080514/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_iraq

The problem is, he is talking about it..

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I added two links to the blogroll on the right. One is to a blog by the guy who write "Not Even Wrong" , critiquing string theory, an absorbing read even if I understood only 10% of it. The other is to the hilarious "Fake Steve Jobs" blog, (of which I understand 50% since its too techie and gadgety)

Was working on something on our balcony at dusk and mosquitoes were torturing me. Mosquitoes are definitive proof that either God does not exist or that the Devil exists

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This weekend, I got a physical hankering to be out of doors in the sun. It felt like my body was feeling a lack of the Vitamin E, or whichever it is that the sun catalyzes, and was making its requirement felt. It was quite wierd.

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Poor Rahul Dravid. It can't be a very fun time for him with the Challengers getting thulped. He just doesn't seem to enjoy captaincy and leadership, the way Ganguly did for example (and Dhoni seems to be a natural). But he's forced into the role and then has a miserable time of it. He should walk away and just do stuff that he enjoys.
He reminds me a little of myself, a strained expression on his face most of the time, rarely relaxes and smiles :-)

I didn't vote, but co-incidentally exchanged a couple of mails with Vivek Menon, a foreign-returnee who stood for election as an independant in my area (he was a finalist in that strange "Lead India" contest of the Times of India). I didn't vote coz I wasn't in the electoral rolls, coz I have no idea how to get on them.

One of the things that keeps getting reinforced in me but I never change my ways is that when you move to a new place, if you (ie I) don't get the basics sorted out immediately (car regn. , cooking gas, water , electricity and if you care about it, voter id), they never get down and later has a disproportionate impact on your quality of life

There are timid signs of life in the electoral scene with very random people starting to try to do something. There are some tiny parties now (partitrana, jago, loksatta) and independants like vivek menon above who are giving it a shot. God knows we need it.
There is an option when voting to not choose any of the candidates, to express protest.
The newspapers have started giving out the financial worth of the candidates. Everybody is a crore+, and some are way above that. With the rise in tax receipts, government also is relatively flush with funds and it shows in the paraphernalia of governance -- high end cars and SUVs, long road escorts for government dignitaries. It stinks.
NGOs are distributed across the country but they don't have much of a presence in any particular constituency. How to build them together into a stronger voice in politics ?

Credit card woes

I got a call from HDFC Bank while I was travelling recently -- my credit card was hacked.

I will track the resolution process here

So far:
-They caught the irregular pattern and alerted me -- so : started off on the right note.
-The bank people wouldn't give me the names of the merchants to whom the transaction happened. I have to file a dispute resolution form first. Excellent logic -- they won't tell me information regarding my own account.
-They won't do any follow-up on the transactions until I file a dispute resolution form apparently. The form can't be emailed in (surprise!) and its to a PO Box so it can't be couriered in too. Again excellent -- critical time right after the fraud is lost, while they wait for me to fulfil the formalities.
- The dispute resolution form says that I will bear the cost of the investigations. Thank you for your credit card Mr. Parekh.

Book review: "God's Little Soldier"

{Pic stolen from Rediff interview below)


After a long time attempting to do a review.

Kiran Nagarkar is truly a cool guy. He's an 'authentic' guy, a person of substance.
'Cuckold' is the high point of his writing so far -- an amazing book. The other books are so wildly imaginative and experimental that they're a difficult read. 'Saat Sakkum Trechallis' (Seven Sixes are Forty Three -- what a cool name) was the most out there of them.

Anyway what to say about GLS ? It has Nagarkar's trademark of hyperbolic language -- nice sometimes but can get irritating after the novelty wears off. I don't have the book with me right now so unfortunately I can't do any quotes. Its also incredibly verbose, another Nagarkar trademark -- I skipped whole pages without losing the basic track. As Nagarkar himself remarks in the afterword -- he was once told by a critic that if he wrote shorter books the critics would read them instead of panning them.
The book is a courageous attempt to plumb what a fundamentalist/terrorist mentality might look like. It didn't quite work (for me), but that's okay. Its a page turner, as his books tend to be -- you read it compulsively.
I think its well worth reading, but probably only after reading Cuckold -- otherwise the eccentricities of his writing might put you off without the countervailing awe that you feel after reading Cuckold.

Here's an excellent interview with Kiran Nagarkar
http://specials.rediff.com/news/2006/may/02kiran1.htm

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To Arvind: since you also liked William Dalrymple, you should try Bruce Chatwin. In a review somewhere Dalrymple was placed in the Chatwin class, and Dalrymple himself once alludes flatteringly to Chatwin in 'City of Djinns' (he sits in the same library that Chatwin visited in New Delhi in an attempt to shake off a case of writers block). I still haven't got around to it though myself.

Musings

Sometimes I have the opportunity afforded by my current circumstances, to clearly look at my 'market value' and ability to make a living. In a corporate job, you are specialized cog-in-wheel, and enmeshed in a particular context. Coming out of that context and blunting my competitiveness there, I have to look at myself in a general way and see -- where can I add value ? What could I do for a living if I needed to look for a job ? Its a scary evaluation, but liberating too because you are not depending on a context any more.

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Deve Gowda is an ass (oxymoron?). He simply cannot forget that he was a past prime minister. Atleast three times I've seen him in the news (and I don't follow the political news much) saying things like "For an former PM .." , "This is an insult for a former PM .."

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My current job has one fantastic upside -- the incredible relevance to daily life in India. I cannot open a newspaper without immediately noticing an article about water. And whenever I see an article, the next question is -- what can the Portal do about it. Most of the time I can't find an answer, so its frustrating. But, that's a problem worth having .. makes for 24 hours engagement with the topic.

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I didn't get sleep last night and picked up Romila Thapar's "A History of India" and randomly started reading. Cholas attack Pandyas attack Cheras attack Chalukyas attack Ceylon win lose up down dominate recede this king that king .. did it strike nobody that this was a pretty stupid business. And how do we communicate to the children in teaching history that it is so ? Sting in one of his albums talks about how he felt that history was nothing but a depressing string of 'robber baron scumbags' and created a song "History teaches us nothing" around it.
Falling asleep while reading a book is a delicious feeling.

Rediff.com news stories always have a long trail of comments that i occasionally follow out of fascination for the sheer brain-deadness, and bad english. Sometimes they're funny though. The following are from a cricket story, always rich with expert commentary and analysis:

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shanmuga sundaram on May 03, 2008 09:14 PM
Laxman is the caption

by on May 03, 2008 09:23 PM
Hello Sambar, First learn to spell 'Captain'

RE:Laxman is the caption..thts y
by chandra mouli natarajan on May 03, 2008 10:23 PM
Coward Chappathi, why dont u show up ur name.

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DC has performed very disappointedly
by Krishna on May 03, 2008 09:37 PM | Hide replies

I have come to watch cricket after 5 years(stopped after India lost 2003 WC), as my home city is a participant in IPL. But DC players have performed very badly so far.

RE:DC has performed very disappointedly
by shahjehan on May 03, 2008 09:52 PM
WHY AFTER 5 YEARS... ALL INDIANS NEED EXPLANTION FROM YOU....IT IS MOST IMPORTANT IN THE PRESENT SITUATION....OTHERWISE MANMOHAN SINGH....

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