This has been a revenge of the underclass.  This angry group of disaffected and many would argue, also disenfranchised working class predominantly WASP voter has come out in numbers and voted with its feet.  It was more of a Hillary Clinton’s election to lose and she hasn’t disappointed on this one.  This election will be dissected and analyzed by the social scientists and political pundits for years to come.  Make no mistake; Donald Trump has been a rank outsider if ever there was one.  He has never held any public office at any level in his life, but was able to cynically harness the collective rage and dissatisfaction of a large chunk of electorate and propelled himself to the highest office of the land.  Sitting oceans away, it is difficult to make an accurate assessment, but just a couple of points. 

   Never mind all that pre-election talk as to how someone like Trump could never hope to win in a changing demographic profile of the American population.  The fact of the matter remains that the United States is still very much a conservative, white Anglo-Saxon protestant country and it’s going to be that way for some time.  A majority of people want to live in here and now, like what’s in it for me and who can I blame for all my troubles.  I think Trump has offered simplistic and disingenuous solutions to the complex economic problems that every industrialized country has to deal with.  He has led so many people up the garden path and they have finally bought into his eminently outlandish ideas.  All through the campaign he has taunted the Clintons and the Obamas of Ivory tower elite having little idea how tough it has been for common folks on the ground in all these years.  One should not forget that he’s very much part of that same elite that he keeps deriding; the only difference I can see is that where their elitism is compassionate in nature, his is the ruthless one. 

   As far as his downright obnoxious and misogynistic views go, who knows, subliminally a core of Trump’s support base might be in tacit agreement with all that shit.  Now that he has been able to pull off one of the biggest political heists of all time, he should be given the chance to succeed.  Trump has promised so much and has projected the image of someone who has got all the answers to every question that you can’t help thinking that he’s setting everyone up for a severe disappointment.  The proof of the pudding would be in the eating.

    Personally, I don’t like Donald Trump for a somewhat different reason.  I don’t think he has got any time for people who are on the margins of society.  Being a person with physical disabilities, I consider myself very much on the margins of society.  He has an undisguised contempt for anyone who does not share  his worldview.  His whole life so far has been a result oriented industry and success is the only currency that counts no matter how unaffordable the cost.  We shall see.  

A few days ago, I happened to watch a video on YouTube.  It was in Istanbul 2010, a literary get-together of sorts.  V.S.  Naipaul was sitting in a chair on a raised platform alongside the host of the evening.  She was trying to draw him out to talk about his lifetime of work as a writer and what drove him to be so utterly consumed by the craft of writing.  I could detect an undertone of humor in Sir Vidia Naipaul’s responses.  Maybe it was my imagination, I’m not sure, but the passage of time and age (he would have been 77 at that time) had certainly mellowed him down.  The asperity of temperament was missing.

   I relate this because I had just finished reading his 600-page book ‘India: A Million Mutinies Now’.  This was his third and final book on India during the course of his extensive travels across this vast land, meeting and listening to all kinds of people from every stratum of society between 1962 and 1988.  I don’t intend to do any kind of review for I am hardly up to the task.  The imagination would not support the effort.  Every time I read anything written by Naipaul, it impels me to examine and come face to face with my deepest emotions.  I think when the integrity of the writer shines through and the personality of the writer recedes humbly into the background, what you are left with is the most distilled aspect of the human condition.  Coming back to that interaction in Istanbul, the video which I referred to, I couldn’t help noticing a distinct lack of articulation.  Some obscure inability to give verbal direction to the life of the mind.  Sometimes it does happen in life that you cannot clearly express what you’ve been doing so diligently all your life.  There was a question about the shift from fiction from early years to the nonfiction in the latter part of his writings.

  Growing up on the small island of Trinidad in the Caribbean of the 30s and late 40s, the despairing feeling of having come to the end of the ‘material’, as he put it, there was this realization that he was not equipped to accurately and truthfully write about other societies whose soil he was not properly rooted in, the inner dynamics he could only feel superficially.  Then, what does he do?  He knows only one fact, that he’s not equipped to do anything but writing.  The passion is all consuming, the burden of ambition is pressing down upon him.  Leaving that small island and the people there with no sense of history or ambition was more than relief; it was also a kind of release.  More than 50 years of relentless travel, undertaking the searing examination of the making and unmaking of post-colonial society, the genius of Naipaul perhaps lies in his great success in overflying the limitations of his own social mornings and turning it into a moment of renewal and liberation.  You take the dark soil of tradition and transmute its energy into arguably the most vigorous and challenging voices of our time, or as he put it ever so simply, ‘’ making my way into the world’’.

   Vidia Naipaul is a master of clean cut prose.  He doesn’t use big words in his neat sentences, and yet he can express the most complicated of ideas, the most profound of human emotions in the simplest of ways.  If you have the ears for it, you can hear the authentic voice of the writer.  You can only know him through his words, there is no other way.  I feel a strong kinship with him.

 * Another week goes by and the optics keep getting worse and worse for Donald Trump.  More and more women are coming out of the woodwork.  As it turns out, Mr. Trump was quite a randy fellow back in the days.  I think the third and final debate between him and Clinton is just a formality.  The writing is on the wall, and I also think that he knows that there is a sense of inevitability about him losing this election in a landslide.

* In 1975 when the then prime minister Indira Gandhi imposed a state of emergency in the country, she wanted a ''committed bureaucracy and judiciary'' and she duly got it.  And we all know how things have panned out since then.  In 2016 the present Union Government without overtly saying so, expects ''committed journalists'', whatever that means!  During the emergency, press was asked to bend, but it was (with few exceptions) willing to crawl.  In today's technological age of visual media, even though we don't have a national emergency, the news channels are perfectly happy to crawl and be more loyal than the King.

* Meanwhile, I've been watching season 4 of 'Masters of Sex'.  This season is even better than the previous ones.  In terms of tonality and aesthetics the show borrows quite a lot from ‘Mad Men’.

Like artists from any other countries, Pakistani artists are just that.  And like any professionals, they will go where there is opportunity and appreciation for their talent.  As it happens, India seems to be their number one choice for obvious reasons.  I am frankly disgusted by this jingoistic frenzy against allowing actors or anybody from the civil society from across the border from working in India.  These people are not the representative of their government or their army.  They are thinking people in their own right.  Any creative or business person coming to India from Pakistan in not the proxy for terror infrastructure in that country.  If you have to take on Pakistan at the military, diplomatic and political level, please do that in all your wisdom, but don’t be so petty minded as to go after soft targets like actors, musicians and writers.  As a country, we have to establish ourselves in direct opposition to everything that Pakistan stands for, by which I mean Indian people and the media, have to be more confident and less paranoid, more open and liberal and less intolerant.  Everyone from any country should be allowed to live and work lawfully in India, and that’s the only civilized and sensible way to go.

After receiving some sound pummeling from Hillary Clinton in the first debate, Donald Trump is smarting and hurting big time and no doubt he’ll come out swinging the next time.  I got a distinct feeling from his body language the last time that he was somehow trying to restrain himself from saying some real nasty things about Clinton, as he himself admitted afterwards, even though this was portrayed as a kind of magnanimous gesture on his part.  But now you may rest assured that he’s not going to be allowed himself to be bound by any nonsense of good conduct and gonna come out all guns blazing, he ain’t takin’ no prisoners that’s for sure.

My mind keeps going back to that old man and his ailing wife.  They have not just been defeated by life; they have been mauled by it.  Three of their sons cut down in the prime of their lives by the direct orders of the notorious criminal tuned politician Mohd. Shahabuddin.  Two of the brothers were doused in acid and the third one, though initially let go, was also subsequently gunned down because he refused to be cowed down, and as a sole witness to the gruesome killings of his brothers, was testifying against Shahabuddin in a court of law.  It is nearly impossible to wrap your head around the fact that this savage brutality took place because the family which owned two small time grocery stores was either unwilling or unable to meet the ever increasing extortionate and illegal demands of money by the henchmen of this vilest of Mafiosi. 

   I think anybody who is mature enough to understand the realities of the state in the last 15 years or so is familiar with the ways of Shahabuddin.  In my mind’s eye, I often imagine the town of Siwan, the personal fief and nerve center of his reign of terror.  Now, small towns like Siwan kind of hold a strange fascination for me.  Nothing much happens, a quiet desperation always bubbling underneath the surface.  There is no sense of renewal, only decay.  The place and circumstances are tailor-made for someone like Shahabuddin to emerge as some kind of an intermediary between the state and the people.  And because the modern functional state has been unraveling for a while now, gangsters like Shahabuddin worm their way into the mix and almost by default become the interface between the government and the people.

   A creeping metamorphosis takes place.  The man is courted and patronized by the political class for his considerable ability to deliver votes to the highest bidder in the electoral arena.  You see, we never fail to make such a big song and dance about our democracy.  This is only partly justified; because even though the hardware of our democracy--like regular elections, peaceful transfer of power and a thoroughly autonomous Election Commission—is working fine; but the software of our democracy—like mainly to repeal of inner party democracy, credible source of funding, the near epidemic nepotism and a feudal value system—is absolutely corrupted, and has grievously compromised its capacity to rein in the likes of Shahabuddin.  When you look at his photographs or videos, you can’t escape the feeling that this man actually quite revels in his criminality.  This unadulterated realization that you can’t just intimidate people, but you can crush them to the extent that they are reduced to nothing. 

   Sometimes, I am also mesmerized by the aura of remorseless evil around him, and then I am almost thankful for the kind of vision it provides me with as to how irredeemably diabolical people creep up on society and hollow it out, aided and abetted by the destructive cynicism of the political class.  

One last word on Burkini ban and I will rest my case.  Like my good friend Sweta commented on my previous post, I am second to none in my unstinting support for freedom of choice and women’s right to be who they want to be and live how they want to live.  But you know, every time a Muslim woman fights for her purely legitimate right to put on Burking or any other kind of veil in the name of cultural identity in a liberal Western society, it strikes a blow against thousands of woman who are struggling to discard full body Hijab in the oppressive Muslim world from Arabia to Africa.  Sometimes symbolism becomes more important than substance.  After all, why were so many women burning their bras on the streets of New York and other cities of United States in the 70s during the feminist movements?

In India the moment you achieve even some minor sporting success and PV Sindhu’s achievements are by no means minor, but I hope you catch the drift.  Now everybody in this country wants a piece of her.  Ever since she has come back from Rio Olympics, there have been endless rounds of felicitations, from politicians, to private organizations, to many charities and whatnot.  There have also been some ritual temples hoping thrown in for good measure.   People just want to milk her success for all its worth.  I mean it must create so much distraction.  I just hope all this adulation doesn’t go to her head and she loses focus.

I have no hesitation in admitting that I am a shameless celebrity watcher, not so much of the Indian variety but international one.   But there is one so called ‘’celebrity’’ that I positively loath has to be Miley Cyrus.  I just don’t fancy her at all.  I know and have also seen some of the numerous naked pictures she has posted online.  But seriously, who would be interested in seine Miley Cyrus naked!!  Even if somebody pays me to collect naked pictures of her, I’d thanks but no thanks.   

In the wake of the controversy surrounding the ban on Burkini enforced by the French authorities, I was wondering where do you stand of this.  Personally, I don't have too much problem with this.  I fully understand the logic and desirability of freedom of choice for not only women, but for every human being.  However, this piece of garment is an innovative idea to exercise a kind of trendy control over women's bodies.  Even if a lot of women have adopted this out of their own choice, my point is that they have done so because of the way they have been conditioned in Islamic societies, to regard their physical self as the repository of the family's honor and shame, and I have a major issue with that.  I think anything whether intended or otherwise is able to knock down the hidebound patriarchal edifice is not necessarily a bad thing is it?  People have dissed women in bikini for far too long.  This is a redressing of balance if you will, but for entirely different reasons.

The Prime Minister is very fond of talking about development all the time.  As if building more shopping malls, airports and highways not to mention smart cities and bullet trains is the be all and end all of development.  What about the human development and more importantly the intellectual development in the country? His ministers and other party leaders continue to express regressive, illiberal and often bordering on misogynistic views in public, which deeply embarrasses and demeans we the people in the eyes of the international community.  But what has the prime minister said or done about it?  His silence on this is more deafening and eloquent than many speeches that he has given so far.  In nearly two and a half years that he's been in office, he has never come out in support of a liberal ethos in society.  I'm not saying that he has actively encouraged the forces of reaction and unreason, but his silence, this almost an Olympian detachment from the cut and thrust of the whole thing doesn't help matters either.  And to think that because of his unquestionable authority both within the party and the government, one word or gesture from him and all the hot heads and extremist forces would have fallen in line.  What do people like us make of this studied silence, that increasingly looks like a tacit approval of all kinds of vigilante groups to bully and harass, and in some extreme cases, even kill those who do not share their narrow minded and bigoted version of this nation.  The idea of material economic advancement and upward social mobility on the one hand, and an egalitarian, open and secular society imbued with a sense of justice on the other, are not mutually exclusive.  Rather they are the different pieces of the same jigsaw puzzle that makes democracy a worthwhile human experience.  The prime minister must speak out and stand on the right side of history.  He should not be running with the hare and hunting with the hound.

Qandeel Baloch was a beautiful and a spunky woman with a zest for life.  She was the darling of the social media in Pakistan.  Indeed, she was snidely but also admirably referred to as the Kim Kardashian of Pakistan depending on what you think of the American socialite.  But let me not digress.  In essence, Qandeel represented everything that is anathema to a deeply feudal and suffocating orthodox society that Pakistan can be.  To be comfortable in your sexuality, dressing the way you want to, living life on your own terms, in other words, acquiring a second skin of western mores.  Surely a price had to be paid, and pay she did.  Her own brother throttled her to death in the name of restoring the ‘family honor’.  This thing called ‘family honor’ is a very curious beast not just in Pakistan, but also in India.  It is quite fragile and vulnerable, and it’s basically used to control and make women conduct themselves in a certain way.  The more docile and submissive they are, the more this creature will find sustenance.

  This pious cant about honor and tradition has been effectively used to keep the patriarchal order intact.  A woman was saddled with the soul destroying burden of being the repository of the family’s shame and honor.  A kind of human receptacle where the clan would pour into all of their fears and anxieties.  As if how she lived or not lived validated their own identity.  Qandeel Baloch’s very existence tapped into this primal fear of the reversal of the established order.  Whether to kill somebody for the choice of her lifestyle, or to harass and hound someone because you didn’t agree with the choice of their life partner is the symptom of the same malaise that is corroding the soul of a large section of society.

  For every sister like Qandeel, there are many brothers like Waseem (that was his name), lurking in the shadow, marinating in their misogyny.  Consumed by their impotent rage to make sense of the modern world and its women, these hateful dregs of humanity will not hesitate to murder their own wife, mother and sister.  I mourn for you Qandeel.  We’ve failed you as a society in fact, we are as much complicit in your murder as the actual man who did it.  We, in our self-righteous notion as to how ‘good girls’ are supposed to lead their life, we in our insatiable appetite for gossip, we through our constant condemnation and judgment, have all contributed our bit in bringing about this horrible tragedy.  

So, after a lot of bumpy ride, the Republican Party’s convention finally came to its conclusion in Cleveland, Ohio with Donald Trump formally anointed as the nominee to take on Hillary Clinton come November in what’s going to be perhaps the most bitterly contested and brutal elections in our lifetime.  Add not least because of such high stakes involved considering the current the geopolitical and economic situation not only in the United States, but around the world.  What is also going to be unique about this election is the personalities of the two contenders on either side of the political divide, but particularly what Mr. Trump has brought to the table as an opponent to the quintessential establishment person and Democratic nominee Ms. Hillary Clinton.  In what is undoubtedly the longest acceptance speech in the history of campaign nomination, Donald Trump, while essentially preaching to the converted, tried to paint a dark vision for the people in the event of him not becoming the President.  His acrid rhetoric was based on grievance and contempt, old hurt and new.  There was no humor, only poisonous anger directed against his opponent.  It is mind boggling the way he is putting out and projecting himself as the panacea for all the ills affecting the American society.  Can one man really have all the answer to the very complex problems of our time? Mr. Trump seems to think so.  “Get me into the office and I will fix everything.  I know how to get things done.”  If the main purpose of the convention was to humanize Mr. Trump, it wasn’t too much of a success because if you don’t feel empathy or sympathy for that person, you can’t see the humane side of him.  And in that cauldron of paranoia and prejudice, it was very difficult to see the human dimension of Donald Trump.  Whatever may be happening in America right now, things are never as dire as they seem, they never are.  But judging by the oratory employed, you would think “after me, deluge.”  I am just thinking what will happen if Mr. Trump is not able to achieve his dream of becoming the President of the United States after  all.  Because make no mistake, until now, every six out of ten American voter has a very unfavorable view of Donald Trump.  So something will have to change drastically between now and November to install him in the Oval Office.  He has staked so much on this like a maniac, really put himself out there, on the line.  I don’t know how religious he is, but he must be fancying himself as Moses parting the red sea and leading the faithful to the Promised Land.  I shudder to think how will he deal with failure.  Only time will be the judge.

So much has already been written and spoken about ever since the news broke of the passing of Muhammad Ali two days ago, that there is hardly anything I could add more.  But I feel impelled by the force of my emotions to say something.  Muhammad Ali's life was a brilliant example of the fact that you don't have to be perfect to be great.  He was arguably the greatest sportsman is a given, but very few people in history have transcended their chosen profession in life and become something larger than the sum of their whole, and he was one of them.  It was as if the whole world was not big enough to contain his manic energy.  So much of our life is about direction, the relentless momentum, in fact, he said that if you are the same person at fifty as you were at twenty, then you have wasted thirty years of your life.  He was a fighter to the core when he refused to be drafted for Vietnam war which he considered to be unjust on the ground that the poor Vietnamese thousands of miles away posed no threat to the United States, and he was a conscientious objector.  He suffered a grave setback to his professional career when his licence was revoked for three years for dereliction of national duty, until his suspension was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1971.  If anyone else would say I am the greatest, you would think of him as a deluded braggart, but Ali had this immense self belief to walk the walk and talk the talk.  

   He had the choice to keep his head down, follow the straight and narrow, in other words, remain non-controversial, and he could have minted millions.  But not him,  instead he decided to become a tireless advocate for the rights of his people and an uncompromising critic of racial prejudice widely prevalent at the time.  The man was a true showman, he loved the theater of the boxing arena where he literally floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee, at least during the first half of his career.  There was a time when a vast section of white America practically hated him, but he didn't care because what was more important was to stand by your conviction.  If Dr. King provided a peaceful resistance to the racial bigotry, then  Ali along with Malcolm X gave the whole thing a radical edge.   In the end, a grateful nation did make up and some more when he was given the highest honor of the land, The Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005.  It remains one of the most moving sight in sports history when Muhammad Ali, his body badly shaking due to the ravages of Parkinson, lighting up the Olympic torch at the Atlanta games in 1996 with so much dignity and solemnity.  We will not have another Muhammad Ali.       

The IPL got over last night, and thank God for that!  But something extraordinary happened as far as I am concerned.  Now, I yield to no one in my love and knowledge of the game.  But this was the first time that I didn't see even one minute or one ball of the telecast on TV, never mind one over.  I just don't recognize that this is the same cricket I fell in love with all those years ago.  I feel quite alienated in the furious white noise generated by T20 cricket.  It is all very well to say that you should move with the times and embrace the new, but this is nonsense!  This is an old game and I like it the old fashioned way.  For the life of me, I can't understand why everything has to be reduced to the lowest common denominator, those shallow dilettante who have the attention-span of a fruit fly?  Quite frankly, the IPL is the epitome in excess in everything.  The mind numbing number of games and days, it is also disconcerting to see 4s and 6s galore on mostly flat decks seriously devaluing the art of batting.  And what about bowlers, are they expected to wrought miracles in just four over?

    No matter how much I try, I don't think I like anything about whole thing.  The over the top and exaggerated hype of the commentators is really grating on my nerves.  The in your face spectators, the ceaseless assault of advertisements from every direction; why even the players themselves look like walking billboards in their garishly vulgar attire.  Don't you give me the BS about how the game needs to draw younger audience.  What is wrong with having more older audience?  Yes, perhaps the young people will bring in more money, but too much money can also corrupt.  In the final analysis, the IPL is a full bloodied assault on my sense of aesthetics about this sport and all my memories associated with it, and I don't want to have any part of it.  I had completely tuned out myself this year.  For me, the league might well have been taking place on Mars.  

Going through this eminently readable memoir by Padma Lakshmi has been a delightful experience.  The title 'Love, Loss And What we Ate' is quite apt in that it is a candidly given account of her life a dislocated immigrant to the United States in the 70s, to a very successful modeling career in Europe, and after that a complete reinvention as a renowned host of a multiple award winning food show on television.  In between all of this, she falls in love more than a couple of times, and then suffers the terrible loss of someone who meant so much in her life.  You get the impression that one thing that has always stood her in good stead is food and finding ever so novel ways of cooking them in fact, you can say that in almost all the important events in her life, food is somehow there as a reference point.  There is startling honesty in the pages.  Her heady romance, marriage and painful divorce with author Salman Rushdie have been handled with a lot of aplomb and self-possession.  I am completely taken in by the refreshing candor displayed when she either talks about her intimately personal nature of her medical condition or the paternity of her baby daughter.  I mean what beautiful woman would publicly discuss her horribly painful periods caused by this gynecological condition known as endometriosis, from which thousands of women suffer in silence out of their cultural conditioning, ignorance, embarrassment or all three combined.

  By successfully dealing with this illness, she has become an advocate to bring much needed awareness to this issue which is the very basis of womanhood.  The thing is, when you like somebody from a distance, you want to know the various facets of their life, and in that sense the book did not disappoint me.  It's been quite an appetizing joyride through the world of Padma Lakshmi.

This is not an easy undertaking, but I will try.  Reading this slim memoir 'When Breath Becomes Air' has been a revelation.  Dr. Paul Kalanithi was cut down in the prime of his life by lung cancer, he was only 38.  He was an accomplished neurosurgeon, a good son and husband and by all accounts a deeply caring human being who had a world of possibilities ahead of him, until the calamity strikes.

  To be visited upon by such a terrible misfortune as cancer can be and is tragic, but death itself is not tragedy, and the way Paul lived and boldly confronted his own demise is an object lesson in courage and fortitude for everyone of us.  Somehow, through the book I feel I have come to know him as a person.  I can almost sense a strong kinship with him.  He had a deep and abiding love for English literature, but like many sensitive souls, he was also fascinated by the idea of dying.  In fact, one of the chief reason why he went into neurosurgery was because he wanted to explore free will as represented by our minds.  If art and literature explain the human condition, then he believed that neuroscience could perhaps give him an insight as to what makes our life meaningful.  Being a neurosurgeon is the most demanding profession in medicine where even a millimeter of wrong manipulation can result in a catastrophic disaster for the patient. 

  Paul thought that merely literature is insufficient to gain full measure of the arc of human experience in all its forms and dimensions, nothing ever can be.  At the very least, or so he thought neurosurgery would provide him with the ringside view of this magnificent human theater that human mind is.  He imagined himself at the frontier of a unique place where there was a perfect synthesis between art and science, between idealized reality and lived reality.  By understanding death, the goal was to understand life and also the other way round, because ultimately life and death are the two sides of the same coin. 

  Now, the rapid decline has begun.  The normal human response in moments like these is a cry of anguish ''why me''?  Then you could also say ''why not me''?  No matter how much you delve into scriptures and literature or even modern science and ancient philosophy, you can never exactly understand death until you come across it face to face, and even then you have no idea what lies beyond that heavy curtain.  It was as if the grim reaper was showing his wacky sense of humor; it was mockingly telling Paul that fine, you were always obsessed and enchanted with death and dying, so now I am going to pay you a personal visit after all.  It so happens usually that when people learn about a terminal illness, they either shut themselves completely off the world around them and just passively wait for the inevitable; or they burn the candle at both ends and let themselves go the whole hog, in other words they indulge their every passion and desire before the time is up.  Paul chose neither.  They say that too much suffering also clarifies your thought, things are distilled to a point where only the very essential matters.  He accepted and came to terms with his mortality with a kind of grace and humility which is nothing short of monumental.  Going through the pages of his book was a surreal experience, knowing full well that every sentence was a race against time, every passage was goaded by the cock and the realization that you might not even live to see your labor bearing fruit.  Paul died on 9th march 2015 surrounded by his friends and family.  He can be justifiably proud of what he achieved and many more he influenced in his short life.  Whatever I write, the words are hollow and inadequate.  I am hopelessly unequal to the task of mapping out the true measure of the man.  All I can do is just spread the word about the man and his last will and testament that is this book WHEN BREATH BECOMES AIR.          

The victory in the Indiana primary has almost sealed the deal for Mr. Donald Trump to get the Republican nomination in the US presidential elections in November where he will be taking on Hillary Clinton from the Democrat side.  When some ten months ago, Mr. Trump announced his intention to contest on the GOP ticket, many thought this to be yet another grandstanding of the billionaire egomaniac.  But as he stood near the escalator of his own property in mid-town Manhattan after he inflicted a crushing defeat to Ted Cruz in Indiana; you couldn't help thinking boy, has he made everyone eat their words or what!  It has been nothing short of a spectacularly hostile takeover of a party which is angry, confused and bitterly divided after eight years of Obama presidency which challenged every certitude held dear by a mass of hard-core conservative base.  This is a pivotal moment in American history.  Ever since the decline of the industrial manufacturing in the west, not just in America, to the low cost labor market in the developing countries in Asia and Africa, the advanced economies of the western world are really experiencing the low growth in gainful employment.  There are vast swathes of mainland America, the towns which ones were powerful industrial bases for most of the post-war economic prosperity of the United States, have a forlorn and hollow look about them, with income levels going down and cost of living going up for a lot of working class people.  Add to this despair the clear and present demographic possibility that for the first time in the history of the country, the WASP population is going to be in minority thanks ironically to sustained immigration over the years from poor under developed countries to the US in search of better life; and the picture looks quite grim. 

     In all this enter a dangerous reactionary and demagogue called Donald Trump, whose bluster and bullying of anyone who does not agree with his woolly headed solutions is drawing a lot of traction with a lot of bigoted and racist supporters of his.  Mr. Trump is appealing to the basest of the human instincts.  The paranoia, xenophobia and a complete distrust of the open, pluralistic and liberal values which most civilized people stand for.  It is a damming indictment of a one hundred and sixty year old party of Abraham Lincoln that they have allowed such a rot to set in their system that someone like Donald Trump could just come from nowhere and mesmerize them.  According to a poll conducted among the core base of the GOP, about twenty per cent believe that it was a grave mistake by their president Abraham Lincoln to have abolished slavery!  That's what it is coming to now?  Fortunately, only seven per cent of the primary voters have voted for Trump, and this is nowhere near enough to install him in the White House, not by a long shot.  He will have to by necessity build a large coalition of voters from every stratum of society, race, ethnicity not to mention gender and sexual orientation if he has any chance.  Russian President Vladimir Putin has described Mr. Trump as one of the most talented and intelligent person!  I don't know about that but if he somehow squeezes through to the White House (remember George W Bush in the year 2000?), he would be the most clownish looking president albeit a somewhat sinister one. 

My Aunt, that is my father's sister related something the other day which she no doubt found rather endearing judging by her giggly manners, but I on the other hand found deeply unsettling and it was all I could do to keep myself from reacting.  She mentioned that apparently her grandson, that is her daughter's boy who will turn 15 next month, still insists on sleeping in the same bed with his parents at night.  I don't know why, but I had the sudden urge to see the photograph of the boy as to what did he look like now.  Then my Aunt showed me his recent picture on her phone.  I could see that he has grown taller and his health has also improved, and that there was an air of academic promise about him.  I wanted to see the picture because I wanted to understand why would a grownup teenager like him would ask for something this bizarre?  Instead of being stern and firmly telling him where to get off, they have only indulged him thus far.  When his dad, who is himself a pompous fellow with an annoying sense of entitlement, asks him in mock seriousness what will he do when he would be doing some job in a different city, how is he going to manage then?  And his answer is infuriatingly simple, he will take the mother away wherever he goes.  Take that Mr. Father!!  Conjugal intimacies gone for a toss.  And to think that they were trying for another kid; well fat chance of that happening now, if you know what I mean!

A lot of well meaning and educated people think that the Western society is more sensual and Indian society is more spiritual.  Then I feel like saying that if western society is ''sensual'', then our society is hypocritical.  The reason being that in the West, people by and large see things or situations as they are, unlike most of us who only imagine things that aren't there.  Our senses are something we are born with, if you are a believer you will say that being sensual is only making use of what God has given us; but hypocrisy is our own invention, and that's where the problem lies.  So, my Aunt and her family may see this as a benign manifestation of the kid's intensely filial devotion for his parents, particularly the mother, but what they don't see is hiding in plain sight.  The cloying affection going rancid.  The boy not being an emotionally balanced individual unable to negotiate the minefield of interpersonal relations in the wider world.  More is the pity.

Watching this fine movie ''Brooklyn'' the other day, I was quite moved by the scene which appear right at the very end.  It's the scene where Ellis, having come back to New York after much deliberation, spots Tony right across the street, happily going about his business and quite oblivious to the jumble of emotions that Ellis is going through at that moment.  And then, as soon as she sees him, there is a perfect moment of clarity where all of her indecision and confusion are washed away at the mere sight of him.  She realizes that he is the only man for her, who has been waiting patiently for her to come back.  She is damn sure that Tony is the love of her life and that this is Home for the rest of her life.  She cuts through the traffic to clasp him in a tight embrace as the credits started rolling.  I am not usually prone to maudlin ruminations, but it engendered in me a vague sense of longing for a time gone by.  After all, my sister also went to the  US, was on her own, and through sheer will and hard work not to mention the support of friends and kindness of strangers, has forged a life for herself.  What also resonated with me is like the protagonist in the movie, she also found the love of her life and future husband in Michael, now America is home and I am so proud of both of them.

  Speaking of which, it is always a special occasion for me when both Mike and my sister Bob come to India.  There is this sense of anticipation, and when they're actually here, the time just flies and before you know it, it's time to go back.  You almost feel cheated because there is much emotional investment on everyone's part, and so meager return!  The paucity of time, the elasticity of time.  How in moments of distress, it keeps on expanding, and when you are enjoying your time, it just vanishes in a jiffy, is quite remarkable.  But I always cherish the times I got to spend with Michael.  I think I can talk to him about anything.  He has got this instinctive grasp of where I am coming from on something.  Watching The Godfather movie together was the most fun.  I have maintained that when it comes to expressing complicated thoughts, I am much more at home with English, so in that sense communicating with Mike was quite enjoyable for me.  I could tell him some unvarnished truth about India, and could also pick his brains about America.  In the end, I would just say Bob and Mike, you guys know your stuff!

   

The only saving grace in Justice Pratibha Rani's judgment was that Kanhayia Kumar was granted bail.  Other than that, it was an awful judgment, badly worded and full of moralizing sermon on patriotism and nationalism.  I mean, for the life of me, I cannot understand why our judges can't stick to the facts of the case and see that the basic individual rights and provisions in the Constitution are not being violated.  Must they get on a high horse and start offering gratuitous lecture as to how or what a patriotic person should be like?  Whether it's me or Kanhayia or anyone else for that matter, nobody needs a certificate on patriotism from anybody.  Everyone is a patriot in his or her own way.

Arnab Goswami and Sudhir Chowdhry are the bosses of two of the most widely watched news networks in India.  The former runs TIMES NOW, the English one and the latter ZEE NEWS, the Hindi one.  They both earnestly claim to be a conscientious television journalist who are driven by the noblest of the professional objectives; but the reality is quite different.  Every night on Primetime, these gentlemen get on their soap box and launch into a harangue against anyone or anything that doesn't fit into their narrow vision of what constitutes 'National interest'.  To my mind, they have done a great disservice to the community of television journalists in this country.  If you watch them, which I don't by the way, you can't help but being perversely  mesmerized by the kind of reactionary demagogue they become, denouncing anyone who tries to put across a liberal or sober element into the discussion.  Theirs is an agenda driven show in the guise of a news programme, where they would try to suck up to the powers that be and promote mostly the Hindu right-wing world view.  They would ask you a loaded question and then trap you if you are on the side of reason rather than emotion.  The pomposity, the exaggerated notions of patriotism where there is no place for nuance or complexity can be quite unnerving if you are not a smart cookie.  They have been a kind of unfortunate trend setter in that the news stories are not so much reported as they are influenced.  Entrapment of unsuspecting people, morphed videos, manipulated editing, everything and anything is a fair game in the mad rush for getting the maximum  eyeballs, the ethics be damned.   The angry shout, the hectoring tone, this constant bullying into accepting one particular point of view makes you wonder where have all the decency from the public life gone?  There's complete certainty on their part that there can be no competing or contesting ideas of nationalism in this diverse and pluralistic society of ours.

   The white noise of lies, slander and half truths night after night have reduced the public discourse to the level of the gutter.  I have personally seen people who take their cue from these news channels, internalizing the mindset of a lynch mob where there is no room for any doubt about anything whatsoever.  There is a behavior pattern which is animated by an almost puritanical rage against individual liberty and personal freedom.  The old tactics is resorted to where if you can't take on somebody with logic and sober argument, you abuse and become shriller and shriller.  These people might be in the business of asking for banning, hanging and punishing the so called 'anti-national elements', but I would never like that to happen to these pious hate-mongers on Primetime television.  Because no matter how distasteful and offensive I find their proposition to my sensibility, I do believe that they have every right to express them.  I stand in opposition to everything that they represent but I would never like to become intolerant as they are.  What I can do however is keep challenging the bigotry and prejudice, and keep pushing the boundaries of civilized debate.

The other day, the Prime minister was telling the students at a university in Banaras about the virtues of being young and free-minded individuals they have to become if the country has to move forward.  Maybe the grotesque irony of the situation was completely lost on him.  Because just a couple of days before that, there was a brutal crackdown on a group of students by the police on the campus of one of the premier liberal arts university in the country, the JNU in the capital New Delhi.  Their supposed crime was that they were chanting 'anti India/anti national' slogans.  This peaceful agitation so unnerved the government about the imminent collapse of the mighty Indian state that it used methods which was grossly disproportionate to the so called 'treasonous act' by a handful of disaffected youngsters.  Anyone not familiar with the devious high-handedness of the Indian state would have thought this something out of a banana republic!

   There is a basic problem with the attitude of the government.  They believe that they have a monopoly over what constitute nationalism and patriotism.  When you start defining these nebulous and subjective facets of community life into a rigid structure of your ideological value system; then it is a very short step before your patriotism turns into a worldview grounded in jingoism, reaction and half-truths, that can do incalculable damage to this country.  To me, the freedom of speech and expression is absolute and non-negotiable.  I must have the right to express my views without any fear, and this also includes the freedom to mock and ridicule any religion or nationality, and if in the process, somebody's sentiments are offended, so be it.  As long as people are not indulging in violent activities, why can't the government just let us be?  Even the Constitution has not defined nationalism and has left it to the individual's devices.  I am much more concerned about the health of the Republic which need to be guarded against the growing virus of intolerance.

Nowadays I have almost completely given up on watching national news channels.  I realized that news on Indian television is not about the good old fashioned reporting from the ground, but mostly about talking heads in the studio.  I am certain that it's a part of a deliberate ploy to generate so much sound and fury that the real issues gets hopelessly lost in the mad cacophony.  Instead of adding to my knowledge about anything, they were only giving me headache.  So I stopped, I now occasionally tune into international networks like the BBC, CNN and Al Jazeera.  They are much more sober and have a lot more informed debates and discussion.

  What I do mostly these days, is that almost every night-- except maybe on weekend--I listen to the discourse by Osho.  As soon as I'm done with my supper, I get the audio recordings of his lectures turned on and wrap myself in a cocoon of my own world.  The soothing voice of Rajneesh.  It coaxes and cajoles, provokes and agitates in equal measure, but most importantly, it expands your mind and adds a focus to your consciousness.  So, here I am lying down, trying to get cozy.  I have shut my eyes and I'm just letting the words wash over me.  What is it that I'm looking for?  That truth can only be conveyed and understood in silence.  It is more important to know for yourself than to blindly accept, because when you just accept something in the name of religion or tradition, it is a totally borrowed wisdom and not your own.  There is some meditation on life and death.  You come to understand that your life is just one end of the spectrum.  The other end of that is death and that neither can exist without the other.  When there is no disease, there is health.  When there is no health, there is disease.  When there is no light, there is darkness, just like when there is no darkness, there is light.  This human existence is based on polarity, a kind of tension between opposing forces.  The future never comes, rather what is a slow accumulation of present moment, we delude ourselves as future.  These and plenty of other things swirl in my mind, and then I retire for the night.