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.