Advani and The Hindu

It is no secret that the CPI(M) (along with its loyal mouthpieces, The Hindu and Frontline) hate the BJP and its brand of Hindutva politics. Along the way they also hate economic liberalisation, globalisation and its many cousins. It appears however, that where its own hard economic interests are concerned (in plain language, money), ideology takes a distinct back-seat and capitalism rules. Otherwise, how does one explain these two ads

both from the 3rd February on-line edition of The Hindu?

Dhokla or Sponge

Dear Mr Oliver Beale

Your letter of complaint to Mr. Richard Branson regarding the worst airline meal ever has become something of an internet phenomenon. [For the ignorant, see here and here]. After all, who has not wanted, at some time or other, to take a swipe at the abysmal levels of service provided in the cattle class that many of us travel in. I must also commend your felicity (at such a young age too) with the language of Keats and Milton and Shakespeare. When it comes to food, however, I must regrettably submit that you are even more gastronomically challenged than the average Westerner. Your levels of ignorance plumbs depths I have rarely seen in an educated person outside the Kansas/Nebraska/Wyoming areas of the United States.

To refresh your memory and those of the poor souls who have been unfortunate enough to visit this page I reproduce the photo that is doing the rounds of the internet, presumably taken by you.

The sponge like yellow shafts, as you so felicitously call them, appear to be nothing more exotic than dhokla a common (and dare I say, tasty) snack from the Western part of India, served, if I mistake not, with some green chutney (made probably with mint and coriander). Considering that you were on a Mumbai-London flight this is hardly surprising. I confess I have seen more sprightly looking tomatoes, but then, this is airline food after all, one can only expect so many contented tomatoes on board. In other words this was not dessert.

The second item does appear to be a sweet, (though whether it can be distinguished by the appellation dessert is debatable since this was not a main meal). In fact it looks like some gajar halwa again a very popular sweet made from grated carrots, sugar, milk, nuts, etc. You object to peas being used to garnish dessert and so would I like all other equally sensible people. However, guess what? Those green slivers are those of pistachio and not peas! Dare I say, even by the pretty pathetic gastronomy knowledge standards of the average Westerner, you almost touch cretin levels in this department. But then how would you know -- you never tasted anything! You just photographed! So you have only my word for it - they aren't so bad after all. The rest of the light cream stuff appears to be some kind of rabdi - (a kind of thickened milk) since you insist it is not custard (though at this point I am not sure you even know what custard tastes like -- but surely not mustard -- I cannot believe even Virgin Atlantic is capable of such a culinary bombshell). The rest of the meal is probably similarly amenable to a perfectly reasonable description.

In other words, while not exactly an exciting gourmet meal (when did you last have an exciting meal in cattle-class?) it appears to have been a perfectly adequate snack meal, sufficient to keep body and soul together for at least half the duration of the flight. What amazes me is that you were coming from Mumbai; surely one could expect at least some faint nodding acquaintance with Indian food?

On the other hand, as a "high-flying advertising executive" your command over the Queen's English is clearly more than adequate and no doubt that is what will get you places in your career (your letter is clearly going places). Just don't try becoming a food critic.

Finally let me confess -- I love writing complaint letters! That makes us two of a kind (though we clearly part company where food is concerned). And so, here is one of the best complaint letters I have ever read. I offer it to you as a hallmark to which you could well aspire in a few years time, given your obvious talents.

Yours sincerely

Rahul Basu

Slumdog (again)

Having finally gotten around to seeing the much hyped Slumdog Millionaire, I must confess to a profound sense of disappointment. Apart from a rather trite ending (boys gets both girl and money at the end) I have several bones to pick and not the usual one about 'poverty porn'.

1. The scene in the beginning of Jamal jumping into a hole full of human excrement to escape from the toilet is, I think, the most gratuitously offensive scene of the movie. It is not only unrealistic, it conveys the impression that a slum boy by nature has no sense of dignity in the way he presents himself, apart from the fact that anyone covered in excrement would not be able to approach within a mile of a super star like Bachchan.

2. Even admitting that our city cops do not have a very admirable human rights record, it seems inconceivable that they would administer the third degree, including stringing up and administering electric shocks to anyone other than hardened criminals and gangsters, to extract a confession. Most cops in Indian cities have enough to do, chasing hard core criminals and these days, even terrorists, to worry about one quiz contestant indulging in a bit of cheating in a game show by a private organisation, that too when no money has actually changed hands (Jamal returns the cheque to the quiz master in order to continue on the show).

3. One of the more distracting aspects I found, of the movie was the clipped British accent in which Dev Patel speaks. (Even Ben Kingsley in Gandhi made the effort to put on a generic Indian accent). Perhaps the exigencies of marketing the movie in the West forced the Director to have the main protagonists speak in English, however a bit of dubbing at the end could easily have fixed the absurdity of a slum kid growing up to not only speak English fluently, but to do so in an accent totally alien to his environment.

4. Finally, dare I say it, A. R. Rahman's music is completely pedestrian. Rahman himself has composed far better music (for example all the way back in Roja and Bombay to take but two examples) but this is not one of them.

I realise that I am putting myself at odds with about ninety percent of people and critics who have raved about the movie and the music -- but alas, I was taught by my mother to always tell the truth :)

Tailpiece: Take a look at the tomatometer and watch all the critics rave. Hey, am I missing something here?

The Seven Days of Barack Hussain Obama

These items are taken from the New York Times headlines of the succeeding day.

Day 1 (21 January 2009):

Obama to Close Foreign Prisons and Guantánamo Camp

...imposes new rules on government transparency and ethics, freezes the salaries of his senior aides, mandates new limits on lobbyists and demands that the government disclose more information.

Day 2 (22 January 2009):

installs high-level emissaries to handle the Arab-Israeli issue and Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Day 3 (23 January 2009):

President Obama on Friday stepped squarely into the fractious effort in Congress to assemble an $825 billion economic recovery package

Day 4 (24 January 2009): Give him a break, it's the weekend (Saturday)

Day 5 (25 January 2009, Sunday)):

President Obama will direct federal regulators on Monday to move swiftly on an application by California and 13 other states to set strict automobile emission and fuel efficiency standards, two administration officials said Sunday. (The directive makes good on an Obama campaign pledge and signifies a sharp reversal of Bush administration policy regarding emissions)

Day 7 (27 January 2009)

President Obama dispatched his special envoy, George J. Mitchell, to the Middle East on Monday, kicking off a diplomatic initiative that Mr. Obama pledged would be vigorous and sustained, but would start off primarily as a listening tour.

I wouldn't say that is bad going for a newly installed Crown Prince who was always considered long on talk and short on specifics.

Republic Day and other matters...

Watching the Republic Day parade on the start of the 60th year of our republic, I was reminded of my childhood, when, living literally a stone's throw away (on Janpath) from Rajpath where the parade takes place every year, we used to go each year, wrapped up in our woolens in the cold January morning to watch the colourful spectacle. Now, in a more politically correct world, when I see it, it seems like a somewhat outmoded and anachronistic spectacle of a Government displaying its military might to its citizens and to the world - a favourite device of the socialist bloc countries to display a bit of naked muscle to both its citizens and the world.

====

Speaking of military might, I was reminded of Mumbai and 26/11 recently, from a quote from Sunil Mukhi's blog -- "I used to be a liberal but now, after 26/11...". I find an amazing variety in the spectrum of opinion about 26/11 and what should be done, all from my own institute. Two extreme examples..

1. The only solution is to declare war on Pakistan. This involves bombing a few cities like Lahore and/or Karachi (with the assumption that the Pakistan Air Force is asleep on its watch and will do nothing). One can safely assume in such a scenario and with the kind of populations that Indian and Pakistani cities have, that with consequent retaliatory bombing by Pakistan, many 1000s will die in a single day. The argument for this action is that we are at war anyway with the jehadis and tens of thousands have been killed by them in the last two decades of so. This takes the war into their own house. The problem frankly is that the numbers that will die in a day will match or surpass the numbers killed in all the terrorist violence since the late 80s, almost all of them innocent civilians (in both cases). Somehow this seems to be of no consequence to the arm chair war purveyors. And after all this, there is very little likelihood that the jihadis and their ilk will, like the old Arab in the parable, fold their tents and steal silently away. The US has been at war in two places, and from the evidence, it has only succeeded in adding more volunteers to the jehadi cause.

2. The other extreme view (what I would call the Arundhati Roy point of view) is that it is all the fault of the Indian state -- Babri Masjib, 2002 Gujarat riots and so on and we are just reaping what we sowed. In other words, the terrorists bear no personal responsibility for their actions, in killing hundred of innocent bystanders, rich and poor, Hindus and Muslims alike. This despite the fact that the Mumbai terrorists had no Kashmir or Gujarat links, and were petty criminals earlier who were attracted to this job by the promise of money and/or the dream of everlasting life in heaven, on martyrdom.

Amusingly both viewpoints exist in my workplace. How can the same initial conditions give such widely differing views? Just shows that the same facts can give widely differing conclusions in the so-called social sciences -- quite different from the physical sciences, wouldn't you say....

Tailpiece: Here is an excellent account on why the Pakistan Government finds it so difficult to act against all these jehadi groups. The conclusion is sobering: President Zardari’s government, many had hoped, would dismantle the Pakistan that Zia-ul-Haq built — a Pakistan based on the dual primacy of the military and the mullah, resting on the pillars of religious chauvinism and hatred for India. If President Zardari’s handling of the fallout from the Mumbai carnage is any indication, the forces he represents have neither the will nor the resources to reverse history. Islamabad, post-Mumbai, isn’t in denial. It is simply driven by the reflexes imprinted by the history which gave birth to it.

Obama inauguration

Last night I sat through the Obama inauguration on CNN (which also meant sitting through the interminably long sections before the actual event). His much awaited speech, on which we are told he had been working for two weeks pressed all the right buttons. It mentioned Jews and Hindus, Muslims and Christians, and, I think for the first time, non-believers! It spoke actually of restoring science to its rightful place (again I suspect a first for an inauguration), climate change, the economy, and what is reassuring, that better security needs cannot be an excuse for trampling on people's liberties, the two can exist together, -- something that †he Bush administration has specialised in subverting. (Probably a lesson here for Indian hawks who are forever clamouring to have tighter laws that give the go by to standard legal procedure and habeus corpus). His speech was short but forceful, though it was no Gettysburg nor, for that matter, a 'Tryst with Destiny'.

But this post is not about the speech, great though it might have been. Watching the inauguration, I couldn't help wondering how Christian theology suffuses the whole ceremony. Despite all the talk of America being the land of all religions which Obama was at pains to point out, the invocation at the beginning was by the Rev. Rick Warren and the benediction at the end by Rev. Joseph Lowery, both ministers of the faith and both of whom called upon 'our Lord Jesus Christ', the former ending with the full Pater Nostra; the oath of office is taken on the Bible and all oaths end with 'so help me God'. And I got to wondering what would happen if a Jew or a non believer were to get to that position. I suppose a Jew could still take the oath on the old testament though I am not sure what a non believer would do (having a Muslim there or, for that matter, a Hindu, is for the moment such a preposterous idea that it doesn't call for comment at present). And I think the answer is that such a person would not reach that position in the first place. Large numbers of Americans we are told are non practitioners but I believe they would have great trouble voting for a God-less candidate (let alone a Muslim one). Thus, even though there is indeed separation of church and state (despite God occasionally talking to Presidents like George W Bush), the Christian motif runs deep within the psyche of the country.

Comparing with India is instructive. Here the administering of the oath is a strictly secular affair. It is taken by members of Parliament including the Prime Minister either 'in the name of God' or 'solemnly affirm'ed, the latter being the preferred mode of all left parties. I believe this is a legacy of Nehru and Ambedkar, both of whom were deeply suspicious of religion insidiously creeping into legislative matters. An equivalent of the Christian ceremony above would be like having a bunch of priests chanting Vedic mantras, and the Homam the sacred fire, presiding over the inauguration of a new Government, and with members taking oath on the Bhagavad Gita. Even the BJP in its worst avatar would balk, I believe, at this perversion of a purely legislative practice. As a younger democracy, I believe our secular ideals are stronger in intent, than that of the much older one, though we fare more and more poorly in practice with every passing year.

Tailpiece: Science has indeed appeared earlier in 22 Presidential inaugural addresses -- see here. (via Doug Natelson through G. I. Menon).

The Underbelly

"...though because it is a movie, it misses one thing that truly distinguishes Mumbai, the way it smells: part drying fish, part human waste."

Let me begin with a confession -- I have neither read Arvind Adiga's Booker winning book -- The White Tiger (yet) - nor have I seen (yet) Slumdog Millionaire which seems to be doing fairly well in the awards category. But it is the above quote from Somini Sengupta's review of the movie that exasperated me enough to write this post.

Much has been written about these two events -- and a lot of it has been predictable. While not denying the considerable literary merit of both the book and the movie, many Indian reviewers, many of them not particularly jingoistic, have pointed out that the so-called seamier underbelly of India's rise, the filth and squalor, are themes that seem to resonate more with Western audiences, or at least with Western critics. I normally do not hold with such views. A lot of it has often to do with most Indians' very prickly reaction to any criticism of their country, their society and their way of life. We are mostly intolerant of any view that punctures the feel-good factor of the so-called India Rising campaign, notwithstanding the fact that the equivalent India Shining campaign of the previous Government came a cropper in no uncertain terms.

However, I cannot help but feel that there is some truth in the assertion that poverty and squalor sells better in the West than prosperity. This is, of course, a slightly cliched view (it was used in the past even to run down the international acclaim of Satyajit Ray's movies, who, so it was claimed, sold India's poverty to the West - an outrageous claim, by any standards), but clearly it has a germ of truth particularly in a contemporary context. The quote I began this post with bolsters my firm belief that any movie or book that confirms certain people's comfortably condescending view of the country, is clearly on the road to success. (Is it not outrageous that that the reviewer, (of clear Indian origin from the name) is actually unhappy that the filth and squalor in the movie is not sufficiently representative of the real India -- or at least of the real Mumbai?) This is particularly true now when India's (and China's) growth rates coupled with the poor condition of the economy in many Western countries have threatened at least the economic dominance of many of these states. India has still a long way to go, in my opinion, before this growth rate becomes sufficiently inclusive to start on the path to becoming a developed country. But that does not stop the West from worrying about these growing economies and what it will do to their consumption patterns and their way of life.

The issue has a resonance not just in books and movies. The glee with which the Western press has pounced on the fact that one of India's top IT companies Satyam has fallen flat on its face, is clearly indicative of this schadenfreude factor. After all, it shows that the mighty Indian IT industry is not as invincible as it was believed to be. (This is not confined to India alone...the Chinese milk scandal has occupied many many columns of the Western press, far in excess of what a similar scandal in their own country would occupy).

As Jug Suraiya mentions in one of his Times of India articles, perhaps we could grab this new opportunity that has come our way -- instead of the slogan Mera Bharat Mahan let us propagate the slogan Mera Bhikari Mahan.