One of the main reasons why I am so hooked onto this highly niche TV show like ‘’ The Affair’’ is that the main protagonist plays the character of a writer.  I have always been instinctively drawn to anyone who is able to write, to be able to put down his thoughts on paper.  To me, nothing can give such a boost to your ego as to see your innermost thinking translated on paper.  Jean-Paul-Sartre has said that you reach the age of reason when you are 30, so ever since I reached the age of reason, I have deluded myself that I am a writer.  It doesn’t matter that I am not a writer nor am I ever likely to become one, but my spiritual connection to the people whose work I look up to and admire will remain there.  I’ll forever be in debt of people like Philip Roth and John Updike for their provocative exploration of various facets of American identity and what it means to just get up every morning and do your level best not to be derailed by life’s wreaking ball.

   But it was only when I discovered the writing of VS Naipaul that I knew what is it like to inhabit the mind of someone who is utterly devoted to the craft of writing.  The anxiety is fueled by the ambition, and the ambition is tempered by the anxiety.  Whenever I try to write anything, I have Sir Vidia Naipaul as a kind of muse in my mind.  His neat sentences, the penetrative power of observation and the ability to see what is unseen tells you not so much about the joys of writing as to the turmoil of the whole enterprise.  What I have learned is that the personality of a writer is a dysfunctional personality.  You have to be a bit of a masochist to endure long periods of silence and solitude.  It is generally believed that if there was a classroom full of writers than Naipaul will be the teacher.  For him every book that he produced was a sheer agony, a torment.  But he kept at it for more than fifty years.  I feel a certain kinship with him in that like him, I have also tried in my limited way to not let this world drag me down and to be able to keep my head above the water.  A vague idea, an unfocussed ambition to be another kind of man, to make your way in the world, to find your center.  You live with something in your head, you procrastinate to the point where every thought becomes a torment and yet you can’t live without this poison and that is the essence of Naipaul for me.  This is what he said once, ‘’ one isn’t born one’s self.  One is born with a mass of expectations, a mass of other people’s ideas—and you have to work through it all’’

In December 1992, I was 16 and I think I was also a bit of a philistine.  I had an exaggerated sense of deference for the opinions of the elders around me.  I hung on to their every word in matters political and social.  So when the news filtered in on that smoky winter evening on the 6^th December all those years ago that a mob of Hindu zealots had successfully demolished the 16^th century medieval structure known as Babri Mosque; I felt elated.  Even though I am ashamed to admit it now, but and that time I was imbued with a sense of accomplishment at what had been achieved.

  My happiness was on two counts, one, I swallowed willingly the propaganda launched by the right-wing that how that historic monument was an insult to the Hindu pride since, according to them, this was place where Lord Ram was believed to have been born.  And two, because this issue had been festering for such a long time and had created so much unrest in the country, that I thought if the cause will disappear, the effect will cease.  Not for me all this talk in the press about the image of the nation taking a fearful beating.  I hardly cared that this mob vandalism was almost filled with incomprehensible fury that was tribal in nature and scope. 

  Now that I am older and hopefully wiser, and with the benefit of hindsight, I can see that the destruction on that day was the thin end of the wedge, and triggered a vicious cycle of reaction and counter reaction fueled by intense hatred on the part of both reactionary Hindus and Muslims on either side and we have paid and are still paying a terrible price for it.  But what stays with me is how much distance I have covered from being one kind of a person I was from another kind of person I am.  

There is a kind of asymmetrical divide in India between people who like and admire Arundhati Roy and those who positively hate her.  I belong to the former and I make no bones about it.  I recently read a piece where writer and critic Amitav Kumar was in conversation with Roy.  It was a fascinating piece in that the questions were not your usual run of the mill stuff but quite probing and intelligent.   It helps that the person who is asking the questions also happens to be a very perceptive writer and critique in his own right.  But in my mind I kept thinking what is it about Arundhati, this petit and gracefully ageing lady that continues to arouse such strong emotions in this country?  So much so that even though I have enormous respect for her as a writer and a public intellectual, I tend to avoid discussing about her in a gathering, not because I can’t, but because the kind of vile things that would be said about her will be highly intolerable to me, that’s why I escape.  I suspect part of the reason behind this outrage by a large sections of the middle classes could be that she doesn’t conform to any of our preconceived notion of celebrity hood in this country.  She is not part of the charmed circle where you feed off and feed into the illusion of India having become the superpower of the globe; she doesn’t coddle us with tired clichés about human rights and democracy.

       For her these are just the non-negotiable starting point towards the larger question of the idea of justice, without which any society would implode.  Her polemics on big dams and the possible ecological disasters, her ceaseless advocacy of the rights of the tribal and all the other marginalized sections of this land who have fallen by the wayside in our march for development and her uncompromising stand against any country having nuclear weapons never mind India, has shattered the carefully constructed certainties of the elite and middle classes brought up on a heady dose of material development and aggressive nationalism.  She is your party pooper, a rain or your parade if you will.  And nobody likes that.  Just to think it could all have been so different.  When she won ‘’The Booker’’ prize in 1997 as a luminously beautiful 35 years of age, the world was at her feet.  She could have churned one bestseller after another, could have been part of the jet setting literary circuit.  But she spurned all of that and not only has she not written another novel since, but she launched herself full throttle into taking up lost and unpopular causes.  For many this decision of her has been nothing short of betrayal.  It really takes courage to go against the grain, swim against the tide of history.  Roy is neither an armchair critic nor does she lives in her own Ivory Tower.   She is a remarkable woman.  She lives a pretty lonely existence in her Zor Bagh apartment in South Delhi; in fact, she doesn’t even employ a housemaid.  But she refuses to be part of the narrative of victimhood.  She travels extensively throughout the country. From the distant North East to the Narmada valley of Gujarat, from the heavily militarized zone of Kashmir to the hotbed of Maoist insurgency in the dense forests of central India, our very own heart of darkness, constantly engaging with the people at the receiving end of the tyranny of the Indian state.  She amplifies their struggle in a uniquely mesmerizing prose of hers.  I may not agree with her all the time but I salute her courage to court unpopularity and gaze unflinchingly at the sordid and the unpleasant.

   

The enemy is hard to distinguish.  The enemy is hiding in plain sight.  Those barbarians who committed this ghastly massacre of innocents in Paris were thoroughly radicalized by the crazed fanatics who have The Book to fuel their grand delusion of a pious and heavenly afterlife.  They use ancient and primordial grievances as their weapon of choice to rage against the way of life of us infidels.   We all know how all this is going to play out from hereon.  The state will react with all the fury at its disposal, it has no choice really, and it has to be seen to be doing something after all.  There will be further shrinking of the already eroded civil liberties, the tyranny of snooping and surveillance will intensify even more.  International travel is going to become even more of a nightmare than it already is.  So, in a sense the terrorist have succeeded in one of their objective that is to destroy the implicit trust we have for one another as a human beings, that trust which is bedrock of any civilized society.  Anyone trying to proffer ‘root cause’ theory just to put things in perspective will be shouted down as a traitor and worse.  Ultra-right-wing forces will have a field day with a kind of ‘I told you so’ expressions on their faces.  I just keep asking myself where and what should we aim our incoherent and unfocused anger at?  Should we just keep going round in circles like a headless chicken with our numb despair?  

The way some sections of the society have treated one of our most eminent of social scientist Prof. Ashish Nandy over  his alleged slur on the Dalit and OBC community during the course of an interactive session at the Jaipur literature festival is beyond shocking. The mind simply goes numb to think what this country is coming to as far as freedom of speech and expression is concerned. Every passing day we are witness to the bizarre spectacle of one fringe group or the other taking offence to one thing or another whether a film or a book, a song, a play, the list could be endless as if these cretins decide to pick one item from the menu everyday to feel offended about just in order to validate their existence.

But coming back to Prof. Nandy, his comments in the course of a discussion on corruption about the hypocrisy of the elite and how the hierarchy of corruption made the corrupt practices indulged in by the lower classes and Dalits seem more gross and abominable was made in a specific context. But the poor man fell victim to the tyranny of the age of sound bytes where one sentence or remark is not only taken but wrenched out of context by the news channels and is used to create a spurious controversy. Even if what came out might have been grating on the nerves of a few members of the community, the answer is not the threat of arrest or intimidation but equally forceful denouncing  and challenge of the said view on an intellectual plane. If a book or any other piece of art is not congenial to your sensibility or sensitivity, the best way to respond is to write another book or produce an alternate piece of art to contest the assumption or just ignore it and let it pass. Instead what we are seeing today in this country is the increasing prominence the bigoted and reactionary elements are gaining in the public discourse.     

Let there be no doubt in anyone’s mind that I will continue to be as outspoken against all the forces of extremism, unreason and bigotry as I possibly can.  I have a problem and I will have a problem whenever I see that personal freedom and individual liberty are being curtailed, whether by any social group or by the government itself.  And let me also say that I fully support all the writers and filmmakers who have returned their awards to the government as a mark of protest against the rising tide of intolerance and vicious bigotry by a section of the population which believes that the present union government is not only spiritually aligned, but also sympathetic to their regressively illiberal agenda.  Therefore, I stand by all our intellectual people in the country for showing the courage to face down the bully. 

  And please, don’t try to trip me with guilt by forcing me to draw moral equivalence between one societal derangement and another, like if I condemn this then you turn around and say why don’t you condemn that, why you say this now why didn’t that then?  I am too old for games like that.  Everything in life has a context and we as human beings can’t wade into every battle.  We can only pick and choose our battles that we think are worth fighting for.  I am no fan of the previous regime either, who ruled through the murky system of patronage and cooption of a corrupt feudal elite, and it was necessary to get rid of them, but we can’t replace the corrupt with the reactionaries either.  I would like the Prime Minister Modi to be unequivocal in his denunciation of the fanatics and forces of reaction on both sides Hindus as well as Muslims, and not be mealy mouthed on this vital issue.  He must subject himself to tough questions by the media and not cynically use social media for banalities and one-sided conversation.  

One of my first cousins dropped by the other day.  I had a bit of a falling out with him and was seeing him after quite some time.  Now he’s one of those people who nurse political ambition, and all for the wrong reason.  Like so many delusional young men in this country, who after making a mess of their life, think that politics is the easiest way to make a quick buck and acquire power?  I accept that political ambition has nothing to do with creating a meritocratic society, but even so, cupidity and nepotism are the order of the day; it’s a closed shop really.  I thought he understood all that but with a vague sort of clarity which was neither here nor there.

  So, here he was, like a man possessed by a misguided zeal hoping to secure a nomination from one of the parties for the upcoming state assembly elections.  His last attempt to do so had ended up in a miserable failure, and as it turned out, same thing happened this time also.  He was very unfocused and incoherent in articulating his political views.  He mumbled something about giving opportunity to the youth, and when my brother probed him about having any kind of blueprint in mind about the young people in the country, he brushed aside the question as something utterly insignificant.  He carried a sheaf of papers—a kind of resume—on which written in bad English were the sum and substance of his achievements as a political activist.  He talked to some big shot on the phone seeking an audience with him, but clearly the big shot was not interested.  The wheedling tone, the exaggeratingly obsequious manner in which he was speaking on the phone was quite embarrassing.  Maybe, the big shot would have granted him an audience, I don’t know.  Living purely by instinct, shunning completely the life of the mind, wearing your reverse snobbery as a badge of honor, you lose the language of both your conviction and also of your rage.  Looking at him, it was possible to see that a kind of unwieldy ambition was pressing down upon him and making him somehow diminished as a person.  I tried to imagine some common ground with him, but I couldn’t.  The chasm between us was also an abyss and I just wouldn’t reach out to him.  And then he left.  And that was that.  I kept thinking that even though he was sitting couple of feet away from me, I could have hardly felt more distant from him.

Usually, I follow politics at very superficial level, British politics even more so.  The other day I was watching the BBC when they were anointing Jeremy Corbyn as the leader of the opposition labor party after a tumultuous few months.  Now there was something about his pleasing personality that did ring a bell.  And then the realization dawned on me, and I was convinced in my mind that when my affable brother in law Mike Deleo gets to the age of 65 and beyond, he will resemble very much Jeremy Corbyn!  And the more I saw, the more I thought that Mike will not just look like him in the old age, I don't know whether it was my imagination, but I also discovered some commonality of traits.  The same tall and lanky frame, the relaxed and graceful movement not to mention the amiable demeanor that could be engaged and detached at the same time.  It was quite uncanny really.  If you happen to be reading this Mikey, please don't mind man because I am saying this entirely as a compliment.  As far as I am concerned, it could never be otherwise.

Tuning into BBC, CNN and Al Jazeera every evening, you are brought face to face with a gut-wrenching and a harrowing human tragedy.  Hundreds and thousands of vulnerable and dispossessed people are fleeing their strife torn and civil war ravaged countries in the Middle East and North Africa to seek sanctuary and asylum in more prosperous western and northern Europe on a daily basis.  Devoid of either hope or any kind of legitimate documentation, these people, possessed by frightening audacity, are literally putting their lives at risk in order to get to the Promised Land.  Those migrants who are leaving the shores of North Africa are crossing the Mediterranean and landing in Italy, even though scores of them are dying every month either by drowning in leaky overcrowded boats, or being claimed by sea sickness.

  What has really astounded me no end is the kind of treacherous journey undertaken by those from Syria and Iraq.  Moving entirely on foot, these thousands of men, women and children are first crossing into neighboring Turkey, from there sailing in boats like tightly packed Sardines further west to the Greek islands.  From there on, the journey begins once more on foot, this great mass of humanity marching northward into Macedonia and then into Hungary; their aim being to cross the border to Austria towards west, and then to their final destination of either Germany, France or The United Kingdom.  In that long and arduous journey, they endure all kinds of hardship, from being robbed by the criminal gangs to beating by the police and security forces. It is nothing short of a surreal sight to see all kinds of men, women and small children’s marching down the road with a desperate determination.  Some are escaping persecution by the state and some are running for their lives, from possible genocide. Small children sitting on the shoulders of the elders, frail women some of them pregnant trying to heave their bodies willing them to keep moving until they reach were they want to be. I guess this was the exodus they talk about in The Old Testament.  Even if these people get there, there is no guarantee that they will be able to build a better life for themselves. But their hope lies in the fact that may be, just may be if the fear of death and persecution goes away, they might have a shot. To be fair to the countries in the European Union, they are trying to accommodate as many migrants as possible, but that generosity is fuelling another kind of resentment among the people in the host country.  Some leaders like Erdogan of Turkey and Putin in Russia are taunting the European government that it was there policies along with the U.S that resulted in the crisis in the Middle East & in North Africa in the first place, so it is their moral obligation to help these refugees. On the other hand the European leaders are saying that if the rulers in those countries had put their house in order, this humanitarian disaster would not have erupted.  I don’t know who is right or who is wrong, neither do I have any solution to offer. But every night I am depressingly mesmerized to see this human catastrophe beamed in my living room.

May I know how many perpetrators of the Gujarat carnage of 2002 have been given death sentence and lest I be accused of selective memory, how many people who actively participated in the butchering of thousands of innocents Sikhs on the streets of New Delhi in 1984 been sent to the gallows?  The answer is, none.  And what about those animals who not only violently gangraped and killed a young girl in a moving bus, but also horribly mutilated her body beyond imagination.  Why are they enjoying the state's hospitality in a maximum security prison in the country?
But instead you chose to execute a man who naively believed in your criminal justice system.  By no means am I suggesting that Yakub Memon was not guilty of the conspiracy to commit those horrific serial bomb blasts of 1993 in Bombay that accounted for the lives of more than 300 people, or that he didn't get a fair trial in India.  My limited point is that his involvement in the actual planning and execution in that act of terror was peripheral and not central.  Let me draw an analogy; say I am seriously annoyed with a group of people so much so that I wouldn't mind them being killed, and I find out that my brother is also thinking along similar lines and in fact he is going to do something about it.  As his brother, even though I am aware all along of the conspiracy and the planning to kill those people, I decide to not only keep quite about it but also provide moral support to the whole thing.  So, you can say that I am guilty by association but since i did not directory conceived or executed the operation, I would not be bracketed in the same league as my brother.  That's how I would think anyway, and that is how more or less things transpired.
Call it a prick of conscience or whatever, but the fact remains that Yakub Memon gave up himself voluntarily to the Indian law enforcement authorities in the hope of making a bargain for lesser punishment in exchange of fully cooperating with the investigation and prosecution of that serial bomb blast.  His best hope was a life in prison with no possibility of  parole.  This  is not an unreasonable expectation in any civilized  democracy like ours.  I think because they have not been able to capture the chief executioner of the operation Tiger Memon and underworld lord of the crime syndicate Dawood Ibrahim who was the main financer for this inhuman act, they have taken out all their frustration on the one man who did not get away like those two.  How far this insatiable bloodlust can be allowed to go on just to satisfy the so called "conscience" of society?  As a democratic country keeping in line with the best practices around the world, we must move away from death penalty.  But that is a debate for another day.  If the previous government for the sake of  a vote bank hanged Afzal Guru, then this is a government led by a macho nationalist and how can it let go of a golden opportunity to display its machismo to the faithful and hence Yakub Memon had to be sent to the gallows.

Your whole life is the sum and subtotal of the kind of choices you make.  They say that destiny is the ultimate decider but I think in the larger sense, it’s how you choose determines your destiny.  I am always given to self-analysis especially when I am in a dark mood.  I’ve never opted for regrets for the kind of choices I’ve made; however I deeply regret that I was not given the opportunity to become another kind of man.  A man without baggage, light on his feet, a rolling stone that gathers all the moss but never takes root anywhere.  But here I am, presented with a fait-accomplish and asked to choose. 

  So, I chose knowledge over ignorance, being a discerning individual over being a philistine, expanding of mind over narrowness of thinking, rationality over superstition, struggle over self-pity and Devil over God.  How far have I succeeded in my endeavor is not for me to decide.  Sometimes the net result has been a lot of personal anguish, but those were my choices and I wouldn’t have it any other way.  I hear a voice that says you are lucky, it could be worse.  What is luck after all, but fate’s cheating, giving you an illusion of power.  Whereas the best you can do is to get up every morning and try your best to keep disaster at bay.

I have a vision where anxiety and ambition are consuming each other; they are coalescing and diffusing, inflating and deflating.  I can see time accumulating like grains of sand and it will bury me in the end.

It's been more than 10 HRS, but I'm still reeling from such a high octane contest between Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer.  The quality of tennis was absolutely intoxicating.  Federer threw everything he'd got but Novak gave everything back with interest and some more and was the deserving champion.  He now joins John Mcenroe and his current coach Boris Becker as three time Wimbledon champion.  The more I have seen of Djokovic over the years, the more I have become one of his ardent admirer.
  This guy is one of the finest specimen of human being in terms of physical fitness and almost superhuman reservoir of energy and stamina.  Last evening during the game, Federer surely must have been thinking what do I need to do to derail this man!  Some people might think that Roger just couldn't reproduce the kind of tennis that be played against Andy Murray, but it's also one of the truism of any sport that you can only play as well as your opposition allows you to and in that sense Djokovic just knew what he was doing.  Boris Becker was my earlier hero, he was the most charismatic tennis player I have ever seen and it was because of him that I fell in love with the game in the first place.  So, it was fitting that as Novak's coach, he was cheering from the sidelines.
  As an aside, I could not believe that Kate Winslet was in the house, enjoying the contest, so it was all the more incumbent upon Djokovic to come up with the goods and did he do that or what!

Dear America,
Let me wish you a very happy 4th of July, the day you declared yourself independent from your colonial masters, Great Britain in 1776.  Now you and I have shared a very special relationship over the years.  I have no hesitation in saying that you have contributed immensely to my intellectual growth as a person.  Even though I discovered you a bit late in my life, but through my tireless efforts I have made up to a large extent for the lost time.  Some years ago, when India was a dull place for ideas and inspiration, I found solace in your literature and popular culture.  In not more than 600 years of your history, the way you have attracted the best and the brightest of the whole world at your shores is without parallel.  The dynamism of your people underpinned by the puritan code of delayed gratification and a sense of protestant work ethic have generated unprecedented wealth for your people and quality of life that is the envy of most other nations on the planet.  If the 19th century belonged to your erstwhile colonizer Great Britain, then it can be said without a shadow of doubt that the 20th century has been well and truly yours.

  Whenever the quirks of history have thrown a crisis your way, from civil war to the civil rights movement, from great depression of the 30s to the financial mess of the wall street a few years back, not to mention the ghastly tragedy of 9/11; the intellectual robustness of your people and the technological resources at your disposal have made sure that you have always ended up on the right side of history.

 Of course your society also has its cruel aspect, its dark underbelly, and I'm not blind or impervious to that, but then what society doesn't?  But on balance, you've done well for yourself.  And today is not the occasion to go into all that anyway.  Today is the day to celebrate and cherish the fearless spirit your adventurous people.  Happy Independence day.  

Reading and discovering Naipaul is an exploration into your own self.  Whenever you follow the works of certain authors, you look for some aspect of your inner feelings that will be reflected on the pages.  But somehow Naipaul cuts too close to the bone; and the hurt is a kind of illumination.  I feel a deep empathy when he talks about growing up on a small tropical island in the Caribbean, his manic obsession to get away from all that mediocrity surrounding him, a place that has stopped producing great people, and a place that was exhausted of life itself.

  The anxiety and the ambition.  The former about your place in the larger scheme of things, and the latter about a certain kind of person you want to be.  I get the impression that all my life I’ve been preparing for something, you think that the abstract nature of your education is a kind of freedom, but it can also shackle you into pretending and knowing when you don’t know.  You haven’t anything to go by; the memory does the selection when it comes to examining your own experiences.  The world is what it is.  When your time comes, your time comes.  In that respect, I owe a debt of gratitude to Naipaul for making me gain a better footing on this slippery slope of decay and renewal.

I know for a fact that in India, people make too much fuss about your capacity to be an emotionally balanced human being if you have been raised by a single mother or if you have endured a broken marriage.  These days, I am so much into the young and supremely gifted Aatish Taseer’s, writing, that it really buries this line of thinking.  For someone, who’s a couple of years younger than me, to have come up with three works of fiction and one work of non-fiction in the last five years is a remarkable achievement by any standards.  And yes, he’s been brought up a single mother, the well-known journalist Tavleen Singh.

Back in the 80s when she was making a name for herself as a journalists, she met one of the prominent Pakistani politician and the time, the late Salman Taseer, who was in India to promote his book on his political godfather and former prime minister of Pakistan Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.  As they say, the cupid struck and both of them disappeared for a week in the mountains north of the country.  People in those days were pretty casual about any form of protection, and those were kind of hit and miss affair anyway.  Aatish Taseer was the result of that summer of love.  But because of the history bad blood between the two countries and the excess baggage that people from different religion sometime carry made it impossible for them to continue.  Salman knew that if the word got out that he was not only romantically involved with a non-Muslim and that too and Indian, and he had also sired a child with her, would sound death knell for his political career.  So, when it came to making a final choice between his political ambitions and commitments to the woman with whom he produced a son, and because he got so spooked by the barrage of negative publicity that was bound to come his way, that he chose the former and broke all ties and went back to Pakistan married and settled down, leaving the eighteen months old Aatish to be brought up by the feisty Tavleen on her own.

Of course, I have given this brief background only to illustrate the point that things don’t have to go to pieces if you didn’t have a ‘’wholesome’’ childhood and that you don’t have to act like being “damaged goods”, if your parents first drifted apart and then parted company in acrimonious circumstances.  I am a firm believer that what you grow up to become, depends less on what values were inculcated in you by your parents, and more on your innate and intuitive grasp of the environment around you and how you interpret and make sense of the world.  And what a finest specimen of a man Aatish Taseer has turned out to be.  From a boarding school in South India to one of the finest of liberal arts college in the U.S.  From working with Time magazine and also many freelance work for the leading publications around the world, he’s settled down now to writing fulltime, something he always wanted to do ever since he was a teenager.  But it took some time to find the right kind of voice, his own voice.  And the voice he has found as a writer is one of the most authentic voices in the subcontinent.  The power of raw prose and the astuteness of his observations have a starkly searing feel about it.  The rootlessness of the elite, the resentment of the underclass, old money clashing with the new, sometimes it’s hard to believe a thirty four years old man can be a Naipaul like chronicler of this half made society.  Whenever I read him, there is this intense desire to be like him.

But like he said about his father once, that the presence of him in his life can only be marked by his absence.  My feeling about Aatish Taseer is not too dissimilar.  

It was so refreshing to see the other day that popular Indian movie star Deepika Padukone talking openly about her battle with clinical depression and how with the help and support of the loved ones, not to mention some medicines and effective counseling helped her in her recovery.  Now only the horribly cynical would say that it was a publicity stunt.  I mean people would think what’s she got to be depressed about?  She has got everything going for her.  Her movies are always blockbuster, she has fans eating out of her hand.  That’s precisely the point I wish to make.

  According to the World Health Organization, India holds the dubious distinction of having the most number of depressed people in the world.  As if that isn’t damning enough, it also registers the highest number of suicides especially among the 18-25 age group in the world.  People often confuse being sad to being depressed.  They are not the same thing.  If you are sad, there is tangible reason for it.  Something you can put your finger on.  But depression is a kind of elephant in the room, and we are blind men who have tactile awareness of it, but can’t make out what it is.  Arundhati Roy described memorably this sense of depression in her seminal novel THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS, where she likened it to an ice cold spider landing on your heart and would not go away. 

  I consider myself a bit of a manic depressive; I mean, the cold spider is not there all the time, there would be periods of intense energy, enthusiasm even optimism, followed by a period of dejection, depression and the futility of everything.  My mind would be consumed by all kinds of morbid thoughts.  I would start thinking is it any better for those who are long dead and gone?  Or do we, the living have some kind of an obligation to go on living, to those who are no longer among us?  You see, I am aware of the nature of the beast, so I know how to deal with it.  But for those who are chronically and clinically depressed, the situation is indeed very depressing (no pun intended).

I am no expert, but those who are, maintain that any chronic depression with clinical symptoms can be overcome by a good mix that involves counseling and some medication.  But here in India, there is so much stigma attached to any form of mental illness, that it becomes a festering sore in the family.  A malaise that dare not speak thy name.  When I see so much rage among the ordinary people, both inside their homes and out on the streets, I see in them the rage of a child but this rage is fertilized with an adult imagination, and it doesn’t know its direction.  In India, to accept any kind of mental issue is to admit failure in life.  It is like somehow you have let people down around you and that’s not an option for you.  On another somewhat lighter note, many renowned experts think that those parts of our brain which produce depressing emotions, are also responsible for some of the most creative impulses in human beings.  Some of the most celebrated works of art, literature and music produced by men like Picasso, Van Gogh, Dostoevsky or Virginia Woolf and also Beethoven and Mozart, they thought themselves to be at their creative best when going through a mental turmoil. 

But we ordinary people don’t belong to that category, and I hardly have any answers much less the remedy.  My job is to keep asking questions, and I suspect not enough people are doing even that.

India had a  very good run at the world cup.  Just that we came up against a better team this time and could not get past them.  In a sport as in life, we are only obligated to try, we are not obligated to succeed.  So in that sense, India should be proud of their achievement.
 Now, I have a huge issue with the kind of regressive and misogynistic jibe taken at Anuskha Sharma, girlfriend of Virat Kohli.  I am sure he didn't go out on purpose to fail on one of the biggest stage and make a fool of himself!  It a game of chance and it can happen to anyone.  If she was his wife, and not his girlfriend, then then would have been pious outpouring coming her and not the vile comments she is getting on the social media.  After all nobody said anything when Sachin's or Rahul's wives watched cricket matches.  That source of the resentment is the ''Gifriend''.  What kind of a medieval mindset is that, especially among the young?  Doesn't Novak Djokovic's girlfriend watches when he plays in a major tournament?  The next thing they will say is that Anuskha is also responsible for the mind numbing poverty in this country!

I was listening to an audio clip of an interview the other day given by the writer and blogger Sandip Roy to the National Public Radio in the United States.  He’d just come out with his new book ‘Don’t Let Him Know’.  I presume that he is a proud member of the gay community and the book in fact, deals with the issue to a large extent.  During the course of the chat, he was asked about the difficulty of coming out as a gay man or a woman in the deeply stifling societal mores of India; and his answer was quite interesting.  He said that in India, you don’t really ‘’come out’’ as much as the whole family goes back into the closet with you!  It becomes a family shame and everybody rushes around to cover it.

   That response really struck me and when I started reading the book, I realized what an astute of human situation the man is.  ‘Don’t Let Him Know’ is one of the best work of fiction that I read in a long time.  There are thirteen chapters in the book and what is most remarkable thing about it is that all thirteen chapters could also be read as short stories on its own, but because the author has not lost the overall arc of the plot, it could also be enjoyed as a novel.  That’s the beauty of it.  It deals with the burden of secret many people carry in their hearts and always looking over their shoulders, fearing that if they let it out, it will disturb the delicate harmony of their lives.  Now I don’t wish to give away too much by way of plot, but couple of things really stands out for me.

  One is when one of the main character Amit returns from the US to Calcutta after the news of his father’s death.  The kind of emotions he goes through, the things that occupies his mind is a masterful portrayal of how spending a considerable period of time in the west especially the U.S, can fundamentally change you as a person.  The other scene that really made an impression on me was when Amit ventures out of the house to get himself a packet of chips and maybe a Diet Coke; the shop owner, having known him since when he was a kid, first commiserates with him at the passing of his father, and then asks him what he will do with the old big house since (he presumes), he will be taking his mother with him to America.  When Amit fumbles for the right answer, the old shop owner mentions about his brother-in-law who takes over old and crumbling mansions and converts them into modern day flats by dismantling the old structure.  And by the way of compensation to the owners, he offers them half the numbers of constructed flats.  So if he’s willing, he could get in touch with his brother-in-law.

      At this point Amit can’t help a wry smile on his face.  He thinks this is exactly the kind of conversation he could relate to his friends in San Francisco.  He could tell them that corner shop guys in India not only sell you things, but they also dispense real estate advice!  The point is that what attracts us-- and I’m sure I speak for a lot of people—towards a good piece of art or literature are not the elements of fantastical or outlandish, but the familiarity of mundane. 

I think I owe it to myself that I write a few words about Vinod Mehta.  Normally, you don’t get that affected by the news of the passing away of somebody with whom you've had no connection in the past or somebody you knew in a very limited way.  But ever since I came to know of his death at 73 yesterday, somehow the loss seems personal.  One reason could be my long stint as an avid reader of ‘Outlook’ magazine which he edited right through its inception in 1995 to 2012, when he decided to retire from day to day running of the magazine.  And that was also the time when I switched from the physical form of the magazine to reading online.

The other reason for this sense of loss is that when we like somebody for his or her views and are influenced by it in ever subtle way, we invest something of ours in that person.  We project all of our opinions, prejudices and insecurities onto that person and when that individual is gone, it seems baffling.  I liked Vinod for his uncomplicated and yet insightful views one politics in this country.  His fortnightly column ‘Delhi Diary’, which appeared at the last page of the magazine, was eagerly awaited.  It helped you make sense of the overall state of play in a very humorous fashion, puncturing a lot of bloated egos along the way.

This is not supposed to be a eulogy of the man.  He would have hated it.  So, I will just say that the biggest attribute of his was a certain lightness of touch; the ability to not take one too seriously despite being so famous in India.  He always believed that journalists are in a privileged position of having a ring-side view in the theatre of our Republic, but they must remain the spectators and not become players themselves.  If all those editors and journalists think that they are the god’s gift to humanity, then they are living in a fool’s paradise.  In the end VM embodied now almost extinct breed of editors who were steeped in the liberal and cosmopolitan ethos of another era.

Let me provide some context first.  I was born in 1976, so I’m a child of the 80s.  But there are some scraps of memories that keep floating back and one thing leads to another and become something you want to nurture.  There was a time when I took most of my cues from the guys who weren’t just older than me but also wiser.  I remember at that time Disco music was all the rage and a homegrown version of pop music was taking root in the country.  Once I heard somebody mentioning a singer called Nazia Hassan and how she was becoming so popular not only in India but also in Pakistan where she belonged.  I was dimly aware of her all the time and then I got to know to know that she was dead, but no more than that.

     A few weeks ago, my younger brother was watching a video on YouTube, and since the computer monitor was facing the opposite direction I could only listen to the voice.  It was the voice of what I presume must be a young woman who was having a bit of a friendly banter with her audience.  More than anything, what really hooked me was the voice and the way she was using it to interact with the audience.  I felt as if I wanted to drink that voice because really, it was oozing with a kind of lilting sophistication that was mischievously charming.  When I asked my brother who that is, he said Nazia Hassan and that made me start thinking about her.

   Even though one part of me knew that she was dead, but there was also a kind of vague hope that it not be the case after all.  Next day I googled her and there it was in the Wikipedia entry.  Born on 3^rd April 1965 and died on 13^th August 2000 at the age of 35 because of lung cancer.  Now all of the vagueness had evaporated.  Then I looked up the YouTube for believe or not I had no idea what did she look like though I was certain that she was good looking.  And I was not wrong.  She was the epitome of elegance and poise, a kind of charming grace that was enough to smoothen the rough edges in any human being.  I caught an old video in which she was introducing some Pakistani cricketers on stage and I watched transfixed as she uttered their names.  I’m not by nature given to waxing lyrical about the way somebody looks, but let me say this; you wouldn’t mind someone like her as your girlfriend or companion.

  I kept thinking about the monumental unfairness of it all.  That I am 37 and still living, and she was 35 and dead and almost on forgotten.  A lot of things were going on in my mind like what kind of morning it was in London when she breathed her last?  How did she spend the last night?  How does someone at that age even comprehend the dread that cancer induces in us.  In the midst of these morbid thoughts, I went off at a tangent and started wondering what was it like to be in the prime of her youthful singing career in the 80s.  It was a time when religious fanaticism in Pakistan was making serious inroads in society under the Martial law administration of Gen. Zia-Ul-Haq.  If I had my may, I’d have said ‘suck it General! She represents everything about your country that you never will!’

  In the end, it doesn’t matter.  Nothing ever does.  I am probably the only nut who’s remembering her.  But it’s amazing how small scraps of memories can set off a train of thought that once it gathers momentum, doesn’t know when or where to stop.

What is it about this movie ‘Birdman’ that has created such a buzz, propelling it all the way to the best picture and best director Oscar winner?  I’ll have to find out by watching it.  I’m so happy for Eddie Redmayne; the guy did a stupendous job enacting such a severely disabled character of Stephen Hawking.  Whatever people might think a best actor Oscar trophy really validates your identity as an actor and a performer.  You leave a legacy behind you.  You don’t have to look any further than Tom Cruise; he’s been one of the most bankable stars in Hollywood for many years and yet the biggest hole in his career has been the conspicuous absence of this golden statue.

   By the same token, Julianne Moore, after doing years of good work gets her due reward by getting the best actress award for playing an academic professor, who struggles to cope with the onset of Alzheimer in the movie ‘Still Alice’.  Even though I would have loved to see ‘Boyhood’ win some of the awards, because this movie is close to my heart.  But never mind there were so many good selections to choose from that somebody had to miss out.

   On a different note, how wonderfully they present the show.  Everything works with clockwork precision and the warmth and camaraderie seems genuine.  This is one occasion when the actors aren’t actually acting.  I was desperately hoping that Kiera Knightly or Jennifer Lopez would come on the stage so that I could have had a better look at them in all their glory!  But I did get to see Jennifer Aniston and boy didn’t she look stunning!  And Meryl Streep’s tribute to those who passed on during the course of the year was truly moving.  And last but by no means least, Lady Gaga can sing!

‘THE UNQUIET ONES A History of Pakistan Cricket’ has to be of the finest books on cricket to have come out in recent times.  And let me also say that the author Osman Samiuddin is without doubt the best cricket writer in south Asia especially when it comes to Pakistan cricket.  As the subtitle suggests, the book is primarily a chronological history of the evolution Pakistan cricket, but in broad terms you could also take it as a pithy and humorous observation on the state of Pakistani society and its rulers.  Although the author is a proud Pakistani, he doesn’t wear his patriotism on his sleeve and hence not blind to its faults.  What is quite remarkable is that how cricket and state of the nation have generally mirrored and reflected each other’s chaos and disorder.  But because of what the author describes as the innate ‘’jazba’’ or passion of its players and some brilliant administrators that Pakistan has enjoyed quite a lot of success and yet because the overall structure is inherently fragile and dependent on the whims and fancies of individuals, the descent into hell has been also spectacular.  This book is a true labor of love.  It is witty in style and ambitious in scale.

The couple of chapters devoted to unarguably the most influential cricketers that Pakistan has produced namely Imran Khan and Javed Miandad make for a riveting reading.  Their respective characters have been deconstructed like an accomplished psychoanalyst.  For someone like me who’s always had this curious fascination with Pakistan, our neighbor with whom we have shared a love-hate relationship for nearly 70 years, this was a kind of book I’d been looking for quite a while now.

I asked my Oscar trivia question to five people.  Shipra got it right while Kat, D and Mike came up with the wrong answer.  Sylvie had no idea and when I told her it was Daniel Day Lewis, she said the man creeps her out.  I was taken aback somewhat.  I mean why would such a seriously fine actor like him would creep you out?  But anyway, to each his own.  Kat said Jack Nicholson which is par for the course.  What was most interesting was Mike and D’s answer.  They said Marlon Brando.  A perfectly reasonable answer given that he has been one of the legends of Hollywood in fact film scholars and historians talk about the craft of acting in two parts namely before Brando and after Brando because he was the watershed as far as the method of acting is concerned.  Because until he arrived on the scene, acting was done mainly in a theatrical fashion which was far from natural.  But his approach to acting really changed the way subsequent generations of actors faced the camera.  Marlon Brando introduced what is now known as method acting where there is plenty of realism in the way you enact the character.  They call it “getting under the skin of the character”.  So it is but natural to assume that if anybody would have got three Academy award for best acting in a leading role, it would be him.  And yet that’s not the case.  Brando got two Oscars in his glittering career.  First time he won the trophy in 1955 in Elea Kazan’s ON THE WATERFRONT and the second time he was given the award was in 1973 for playing the role of Don Vito Corleone in THE GODFATHER. 

When he was called upon the stage in 1973 to receive  the award, something almost surreal happened when I think about it.  Not only he refused to accept the award which  so many actors crave all there lives but he also launched into a full blown tirade against the American corporate and military-industrial complex in general and the brutal and exploitative treatment of the native red Indians by the state in particular.  Things got so heated that he had to be ordered off the stage by that poster boy of right wing America John Wayne who was obviously outraged.  By that time Brando had clearly aligned himself with the liberal agenda big time.  He was a sort of pioneer in Hollywood activism the likes of which men like George Clooney and Sean Penn have carried forward.  

                                                                                  

Let’s not be mealy mouthed for once.  We must have the guts to call a spade a spade.  And by that I mean the toxic spread of Wahhabi Islam that is wreaking havoc in the civilized world.  Ironically these medieval psychopaths are adopting the same methods of modernity that they are raging against to propagate their diabolical worldview.  Even the very word Islam means total and complete submission in Arabic.  Now it has come to signify an unquestionable submission to the forces of unreason and bigotry.  Don’t get me wrong, I am not an Islamophobe.  My love and respect for the Muslim community is no different from my love and respect for any other community and since I am not a religious minded anyway, it doesn’t matter to me in the least.

I don’t want to get into a Freudian analysis of the alienation some sections of the Muslim community be experiencing and I also don’t wish to dig out that old chestnut ‘’root cause’’.  My contention is that every other organized religion has undergone some sort of reform over the centuries but only the mainstream of Islam that is caught in a time warp.  We’ve all been witness to the kind of barbarism being perpetrated by a lot of crazed people in the name of Islam and the prophet.  By raining death and destruction on the innocent people, from Nigeria to France and from Australia to Kenya, they want to establish a utopia of their delusion.  And what could be more abominable than the fact that they derive sustenance from Islam for their murderous ideology. 

The so called ‘’silent majority’’ have done a great disservice to their religion by remaining quite on the growing fundamentalism among the community in general and the young in particular.  Every time something horrible occurs, they will indemnify their condemnation with all kinds of qualifications and rationalizations to guard against any future backlash.  A little more courage and outspokenness on the part of the moderate sections of the Muslim community against all kinds of vile practices and atrocities committed in the name of their religion would be a good beginning.