Wit (ch) Hunting

You are a wit

Since you are a wit

I find it fit

To play a little game

I’ll be the hunter, you be the game

I don’t just have the gun

I also have the pun

I just need to add a ‘ch’

At the end of your wit

And you become a witch

And witch-hunting you know is profound

You’ll call it profane

But I’ll make sure you die without a sound.

Lalitpur2

 
 
 
 

Lalitpur yatra

 

Nusrat has not left the building

It's been ten years since Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan passed away on Aug 16, 1997. But the Shah-en-Shah of qawwali still reigns in the hearts of millions.

(A shorter version of this article appeared in Outlook, Sep 3 issue. Link: http://outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20070903&fname=Legacy&sid=1)


Chhap tilak sab cheeni re mose naina milay ke
Prem bhati ka madva pilay me
Matvali kar deeni re mose naina milay ke

(You’ve taken away my identity by just looking at me. You’ve made me drink the love-potion, you’ve maddeningly intoxicated me by just looking at me.)

This 13th century qawwali of Amir Khusrau was a favourite of Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and audiences went mad when he sang this, or for that matter any of his compositions. The above lines may well have been composed about him, for he simply was an intoxicator. It’s been ten years since he died on 16th August 1997 at Cromwell Hospital in London, but his magic lives on. If one was not told that Khan has passed away, one wouldn’t know, for you always stumbles upon some composition of his that you’ve never heard. He holds the record of recording a staggering 125 albums.

His records sold more than Elvis, says an article on the National Public Radio (USA) website. Jeff Buckley, the singer whose promising career was cut short with his drowning at the age of thirty, was a great fan of the Ustad, and used to call him, “My Elvis”. It is an irony that Nusrat passed away on the same day as Elvis, twenty years after him. Even more ironical is the fact that Buckley also died in 1997, and in the same month when his interview with Nusrat was published in Sambhala Sun in May. In the interview, Jeff tells Nusrat that the first song he heard of his was ‘Ye jo halka halka suroor hai’, and that it saved him; he was going through such a bad phase.

Dildar Hussain, 49, who played tabla in Khan’s party, performed with him from 1979 till the end. Hussain recounts performing with Khan at Rishi Kapoor’s wedding in 1979. “We started at ten in the night and went on till seven in the morning. He sang Halka Halka Suroor for two and a half hours and the audience was simply mesmerized.” Hussain recalls another occasion in Colchester, England, when they were slated to perform for half an hour, and went on for well past six hours. “It was cold, and it was raining, but all the white people were just in a trance and wanted him to go on,” Hussain recalls.

“You can’t talk about sun’s brightness, that is stating the obvious,” says Kailash Kher about Khan, who has been a long standing inspiration for him. He got hold of some rare recordings of Nusrat from a friend in Delhi way back in 1985, “when Nusrat was not really known in India.” Kher, who is sometimes dubbed by the media as Chhota Nusrat, has been approached to sing with Eddie Vedder at a tribute concert for Khan. Khan had collaborated with Vedder for two ‘masterpiece’ tracks of Dead Man Walking, namely The Face of Love and The Long Road. In India, ironically, Khan’s mass fame came with a plagiarized version of his song. Everyone knows the song Tu cheez badi hai mast which was ripped off from Dam Mast Mast. Since Bollywood thrives on romantic songs, qawwalis which intertwine divine and human love, became easy fodder by twisting them a little. Another song that would have enraged Khan was Mera Piya Ghar Aaya in the film Yaarana which starred Rishi Kapoor. Even the lyrics were lifted and Madhuri gyrated gaudily to a song that was supposed to be devotional. “Ustad ji was unfazed by all this,” says Hans Raj Hans who was given a break by Khan in Kachche Dhaage, “He was a dervish. He was happy even when he was being plagiarised. He used to say that this means that message is spreading.”

Khan was famous across the globe before he hit the mass market in India. He had been promoted by Oriental Star Agency of Birmingham, the company that owns the maximum number of his records now. He toured across the world, latitudinally from Bombay to Birmingham; longitudinally from Japan to USA. Peter Gabriel took great interest in his work, and his company Real World released several tracks of his. A lot of experimentation was done, trying to fuse sounds from East and West. The collaboration with Michael Brook brought about Mast Mast in 1990, which had instruments from across the world. Khan received flak for corrupting the qawwali form, but he always believed that tradition is a living thing, and it is the responsibility of a musician to innovate and keep it alive.

Khan had already injected life into qawwali, by marrying the folk form with Hindustani classical music. His khyal interludes are unparalleled, and they added to the intoxicating power of qawwalis. In a traditional qawwali, he would begin with a Persian invocation to God, and then gradually the tempo would increase. In the same song, he could use Persian, Punjabi, Urdu and Hindvi with ease. His voice would rise like a crescendo, and his hands would gesture the beats, and he was like a man possessed when singing. Khan brought in khyal in qawwali, and his student Salman decided to do some experiment with Rock. And Junoon was formed. Salman Ahmad first met Khan in 1990 at a fundraising concert for Imran Khan’s cancer hospital. “He sat onstage, cross legged on a Persian carpet, looking like a Punjabi Buddha, while his qawwali group brought out the harmoniums, tablas, and cups full of Lahori chai,” he recounts the first meeting. Salman, who had grown up on Pink Floyd and John Lennon, was asked to play while Khan sang Mast Mast. Salman asked what he should do, and Khan replied with a ‘childlike innocence’, “whatever your heart tells you to do.” This turned out to be the most important advice, Salman tells. Salman recalls the concert of Nusrat at the Hockey Stadium in Karachi, in March 1996, “We had just lost the quarter finals to India in cricket, and the mood was depressing. As soon as Nusrat started singing Dum Must Qalandar, Halka halka Suroor and Allah Hoo, the atmosphere became joyous, cathartic and transcendental!I was totally swept up in the emotion of his voice as was everybody else in that stadium. It was one of the most memorable concerts that I've been a part of and it illustrated the powerful healing power of qawwali.”

Ten years after Khan, his legacy is being carried forward by his nephew, Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, who may not be a genius and a ‘dervish’ like him, but has his style. Then there are his other two nephews, Rizwan and Muazzam, who are also doing very well – Peter Gabriel has collaborated with them too and Real World has released their albums. Besides them, there is Naeem Abbas Rufi, also his student and our own Kailash Kher and Rabbi. Bollywood has a lot of space for qawwali now, and has almost become a formula to include one qawwali in every second film. Among these and the rest, Khan is still the best-seller. Nupur Audio, which acquired a lot of audio and video from Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan Academy in London, sells 5000 CDs every month in India, their creative consultant tells.

For a genius like Khan, it is expected to find fans in the most unlikely quarters. So you can find a group called Brooklyn Qawwali Party in New York, headed by percussionist Brook Martinez. While working at the World Music Institute, Martinez disovered that Khan’s music sold than anyone else’s. He heard him live at Meany, and then there was no looking back. In 2004, he formed his party, and the instrumentalists began performing Allah Hu using saxophone, trumpets, and trombones. They would sound like an Indian wedding band when you hear them first, because of the use of organs. However, the music immediately catches you with their jazzy rendition of Khan’s music, and the beautiful interplay of instruments. One can hear their music online at brookmartinez.com. Marinez believes there is an organic connection between jazz and qawwali, “The main organic connection between qawwali and jazz is that they are both based around improvisation.  We both play songs and then improvise within the form of the song.   Qawwali is also comparable to American gospel music because it is a collective choir of voices that improvise more collectively.”

In the United Kingdom, Gaudi, an international dub and reggae artist, has just come up with a tribute album called Dub Qawwali. Gaudi has been hooked on to Khan’s music from the 1980s and has qawwali vocals in the title track his 2004 album Bass, Sweat and Tears. Gaudi says that Khan is immensely popular in the UK and the beauty of his music “is the different ways in which his music touches all these different people: for some it’s the spiritual and religious aspect, for others the lyricism and depth of message … many fans of Nusrat and of Qawwali music don’t even speak the language however it doesn’t stop them being moved or touched by the power of his voice or the journey of the music.” Gaudi took years to bring out this album. He spent two months just listening to various tracks that Rehmat Gramphone Company, the initial producers of Nusrat, had sent him. He knew the task was daunting, and did not want to use popular tracks as that would seem opportunism. The album features unheard tracks of Nusrat, and Gaudi has done a great job of fusing Jamaican dub beats with Khan’s vocals. The title track, Baithe Baithe Kaise Kaise Rog Lagaye is particularly scintillating.

Farjad Nabi, a Pakistani documentary filmmaker, made his debut in 1998 with Nusrat Has Left The Building…But When? . The title is a take on the famous phrase “Elvis has left the building”. This phrase was always announced after an Elvis show. Later it acquired the meaning on anyone passing away, or someone past his days of glory. The film was an experimental film, shot in just over a week. The film was a collage that clippings of Nusrat songs from 1970s till the end. It insinuated that with commercialization, Khan had probably lost his early touch towards the end. Farjad says, “Nusrat had been singing for decades before Peter Gabriel discovered him. The sudden recognition and money must have effected him in some way. Since the film is a personal response to the change in his music, I can only say that I had felt deeply disappointed at the change.”

Farjad has a point. From the simple arrangement of harmoniums and tables and Khan’s indomitable lung power, which created a complex web of music with chants, classical interludes, unparalleled poetry, the volcanic fervour in Khan’s voice, which simply pulled in the audience, to techno instruments of the West dominating his voice, it does sound like a compromise. However, when you hear the sounds, the jazz musicians, Senegalese jembe, the dub beats jamming with Khan’s voice, you know he is the ambassador of love and music. Like Salman says, “He inspired me to see with the heart and think beyond borders...”. It seems that. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan dead is more powerful than Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan alive. Nusrat has not yet left the building…

limericks

5 limericks that I wrote for a limerick contest:

May 2004 Sushma Swaraj threatens to shave her head and sleep on the floor if Sonia Gandhi is made the prime minister। It's an irony that Indian people had given their verdict by defeating Sushma Swaraj who was pitted against Sonia in MP elections।

There lived a fiery tongue like a broken barrage
She lost polls to an Italian and cried 'Swaraj'
"Even though I'm wed"
She said, "I will shave my head"
So she put the budding minister back in the garage.-------

1991-1996. Narasimha Rao and his art of silence.Rao, despite the fact that he knew many languages, barely spoke in anyone. He would act only when he was forced to do so.

The old pouty man was a polyglot
Yet his motto was 'Speak Not'
A mosque fell, led to a riot
The old man just kept quiet
He kept quiet till he died in his old cot.
--------------

There are many unlucky numbers. No one has thought about 23. Sanjay Gandhi's plane fell on June 23 1980. CISF revolted in Bokaro on June 23 1979. They were routed by the army overnight. CISF was disarmed and re-armed in 1983. Kanishka, the most infamous crash in the history, happened on June 23, 1985. The first line mentions a Milton poem where he is perplexed about turning 23.

Milton was baffled on turning twenty three
India's prodigal son's plane fell on twenty three
CISF wanted to be free
They fell on twenty three
Kanishka on the same day dived into the sea.
--------------------

1989-1990.The rise and fall of the man called VP Singh. He rose like a wave and receded the same way. The media made him the best thing that happened to Indian politics. In a few months, they would turn him into a villain.

They sang: He is a faqeer, not a king;
The Bofors-buster became a big thing
India was Mandal-ed
The king was bundled
Humpty Dumpty's fall was quite intriguing.
-------------------

1999-2004.AB Vajpayee. And the constant tussle within him what to say. He condemned Modi and the next day was all praise for him. He was known for changing his statements. The first one would be hisconscience's; the second one his party's.

He used to take an hour between two lines
A state burnt, but he said: India shines
It was a tough task
To be the mask
The poor old man often had to change his lines.

Word Dropping-- Six Degrees

Six Degrees of Separation

The other day I met Abhishek, an avid Orkutter friend of mine; and was telling him about one Mr Jaysimha I had met. Jaysimha had thrown up a lucrative career in airlines to become a memory technique teacher, and prior to that he had obtained six post-graduate degrees while working. “Six degrees is quite something, isn’t it?” I said.
“It’s all about six degrees my friend, he said. Between all of us there are six degrees,” he said.
“Well, I am quite happy with my three degrees; and you are happy with the only one you have, isn’t it?” I said.
“Fool. Haven’t you heard of six degrees of separation? Haven’t you heard of Stanley Milgram?” Abhishek was agitated.
“Well I have heard of ages of separation. But this degree thing sounds quite jazzy to me,” I chuckled.
“Well when you open Orkut and click on anyone’s name, a link is shown between you and that person. That person is a friend of a friend or something like that. It’s a small world, you see,” he reflected.
“I guess so,” I said, “the word itself is becoming the world. Just type words on your computer and you have the world inside your room.”
“Exactly,” said the Orkutter, “And Frigyes Karinthy had foreseen it in the early 20th century. The Hungarian writer wrote a story called “Chains” where he said that everyone is linked to any other person by just six other human beings. That was fiction. Then Stanley Milgram conducted experiments in the 1960s and came up with the same idea. Since then, the idea has spawned all over, and it is increasingly believed that any person in any field is away from any other person by just six links. John Duares’ play in the 1990s made the term really popular, and then there were songs and films and everything.”
“Quite a scary thought,” I said, “that Bin Laden is just six steps away from me. If Bush gets to know this, he is also just six degrees away, and then third degree torture may just a degree away.”

Film Review- Harry Potter

Big Battle, Tall Order

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

7 on 10

Dir: David Yates
Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Michael Gambon, Imelda Staunton, Ralph Fiennes

There are no Quid ditch matches in the latest Potter film, lesser roaming around and lesser playing around with spells. The elaborate extravaganza of the previous films has been replaced by an inner turmoil in Potter’s mind. Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) and Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) are suspected by the Ministry of forming a private army to overthrow the Minister.

To keep a check on the activities at Hogwarts, a new professor has been appointed. Her name is Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton) and she is supposed to guide the students prevent themselves from dark magic. Her training, however, is all theoretical, and she tells Potter that this is what is needed to pass exams. She wears pink, and smiles, and smiles, even when she punishes students by making them write “I must not lie” which gets imprinted on their hands in blood simultaneously as they write on paper. Potter, on the other hand, has been told by his mentor Sirius Black (Gary Oldman) that Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) is back. In absence of training, the students are seriously impaired, and start training under Potter. Umbridge starts a witch-hunt in the house of witches.

The movie marks a remarkable shift in terms of the scenes turning indoors. Harry goes through intense psychological moments, where he feels that with all that has happened in the past, what if he is also becoming like Voldemort? “I feel angry all the time,” he tells Sirius. He goes through traumatic nightmares with past and future whirring past him and leaving him and the audience stunned at the end of it. The spectacle is maintained with centaurs, and flying animals, the Weasley twins (James and Oliver Phelps) bursting crackers inside the exam hall, and sparkling spells but the attention is more on the angst inside a teenager, the turmoil of going through changes. Harry also gets to kiss for the first time. The romance with Cho Chang (Katie Leung) is a non-starter, because it doesn’t really fit into the plot anywhere. The cutest part of the film is Hagrid’s half-brother who is a giant. He picks up Hermione in his hand and puts her down when she stares at him. He gifts her a bicycle handle with a bell on it.

Sequels generally lack punch, but Potter gets better and better with every film. The frames are very tight to convey the internal battles. Even the climax is shot in a closed room. The action is lesser than the previous films, but the atmosphere is built slowly and constantly so that there’s barely any time for revelry. The shadow of You-Know-Who looms large, and his invasion of Potter’s memory is chilling. Radcliffe has pulled off the role of a teenage rebel very well. Dumbledore, played by Gambon, is stoic and yet very stylish. Every frame where he enters is full of panache.
Potter maniacs don’t need views or reviews. It is for the muggles, and they can go watch this film without juggling too many thoughts.

interview- mark tully

MARK, MARKS AND MARX

His enthusiasm leaves a mark on you. He’s scored a lot of marks in writing, journalism, in shaping modern media. Mark Tully’s frame is 72 years old, but his eyes light up with enthusiasm when you tell him your school was very similar to his. “So did you get good marks in school?” asks Mark, and an affirmative reply brings out an envious childish smile, and he becomes modesty incarnate “Oh I was never really an academic, but I like reading and writing.”
Mark’s new book India’s Unending Journey: Finding Balance in A Time of Change is a candid, lucid account of his own journeys, through time and space, in India. Once you start reading, it’s not easy to put it down. It’s a first person account with a maze of memories, co-incidences and opinions. At one point, Mark describes his coming to India in 1965. He stayed at the Claridges in Delhi, and had been told that it was not as good as its namesake in London. He says that he, however, was happy for that was the first time he lived in a room with an attached bath. He went to the balcony, and could see cooks cooking on cow-dung cakes. The aroma of cow-dung cakes transports him back to Calcutta where he was born, and he says smell is a very powerful vehicle of nostalgia. He knew it then that he was fated to be in India.

Will or Willed?

The clash between free will and destiny forms an important part of the book, and Mark’s own thought-process. When we ask him why is that foreigners come and stay on and fall in love with India, he tells, “I can tell about myself. I was destined to be here. In 1969 French filmmaker Louise Malle made a film on India called L’Inde Fantome, which was an effort to show “real India”. Indira Gandhi thought it was in bad taste and banned BBC. Then I thought my Indian innings were over. But I was back. During emergency, I was expelled. After that I told my bosses that they had to send me back, for I had done nothing wrong. Not sending me would send wrong signals. After that they gave up on me.”

Going back to his school days at Marlborough school, he recalls how everything revolved around good performance in academics and sports. “Everyone’s marks were read out at the end of the term and it could be quite hard on children who did not score well,” he chuckles, “I sometimes felt like a loser, but in some ways it was good. It helped me experiment and find myself.” Mark believes that too much emphasis on free will makes people believe that whatever is happening is because of their own brilliance and nothing else. “On the other hand, the Eastern philosophy lays stress on fate. Too much emphasis makes it fatalism. The balance lies somewhere in between,” he says. He thinks that kids who are very good at school, very often end up being narrow minded individuals because of the feeling of self-importance.

City of Cycles

Mark believes that it’s in a cycle. He has named his pet dog Mishti after the earlier pet he had, called Missy. The new name connects him not just to the old one, but also to Calcutta and its Mishti. And then his memory takes him back to the Delhi of 1960s. “It was a city of bicycles. Over time the city has changed so much, its size, its transport. Public transport has lagged behind, now there is nothing for the pedestrians.”

Of governance

Recounting the 1970s, Mark says that he wouldn’t say that the governance was good, but the government was more able then. When asked if it’s because of the hobnobbing between businessmen and politicians, with businessmen doing really well after 1991, he says, “In a way yes. Businessmen aren’t worried about anything but their immediate interests. There is a need to go beyond this. The Tatas are into a lot of charity work, but how are they behaving in the land acquisition issue?”

Mark in media

Mark enjoyed political reporting, and the most vivid memories of the 1977 election, when the Janata government came to power. “It was sad to see that government fall just a little while later,” he says. Apart from these two, the incidents that have left an indelible mark on Mark’s psyche are the 1984 Bhopal Gas Tragedy, “a man made disaster”, the riots, assassinations of Indira and Rajiv, and the demolition of Babri Masjid.

Mark received flak for the way BBC handled the demolition of the mosque, and the mutiny in Sikh regiment after operation Bluestar. “We were criticized for showing the visuals of the demolition. But do they realize that if we had not shown the real pictures, what picture would have been painted by rumour mongers?” He says the same about the Sikh regiment mutiny, “We told the story because someone told us. The story was already out. The bush telegraph works faster than the real telegraph.”

Poly tricks

Mark says he’s been sitting, watching the way India goes forward, “the way the wheels go round.” He recalls 1979 when Charan Singh and Jagjivan Ram couldn’t reconcile themselves which led to the rise of Indira again; he recalls George Fernandes who moved Rightwards from being a firebrand Leftist.

“I was in UP during the last elections,” he tells, “Mayawati had been booted out, and a group of Brahmins was jubilant. A guy’s cars had been confiscated by an SC thanedaar earlier, he had got them back with the change of government. I went a little ahead. There was this guy, bandaged all over. He had been beaten up by upper caste men for some silly reason. The man said this wouldn’t have happened under Mayawati. Caste politics is a reality and shying away is not a solution.”

Mark feels that the economy is growing but in a very lopsided manner. “I would have been much happier had socialism worked,” he chuckles staring into the distance.

Word Dropping - HORSERADISHED

Word dropping

We came back from the Camel’s Back Cemetery – Victor, my Australian genealogist friend and I, and had a long walk in the winding roads on the dark, cloudy evening of Landour. We decided to go to a bar. “Screwdriver,” he shouted out his order, and looked at me and asked, “Do you know the origin of his vodka and orange juice cocktail?”
“Sounds like some sexual connotation to me,” I said.
“One track mind,” chuckled Victor, “it has an Iranian connection. The oil workers of USA in Iran used to carry screw drivers in their jumpers. They used it to mix their drink.”
“Then this thing must have a lot of grease in it,” I chuckled and ordered for a Bloody Mary.
“There’s it just the matter of grease, and here it is the matter of blood,” Victor grimaced, “if you can’t have that, you can’t have this either.”
“Well it’s called Bloody Mary because tomato’s texture is red,” I said.
“There’s more to it my friend. Queen Mary I is known as bloody Mary. She had many miscarriages, and was never able to have a baby. That’s why she is called Bloody Mary. Bloodier than her was Elizabeth Bathory, a countess in Hungary, in the 16th century. She used to bath in blood. It was believed that bathing in blooding helped retain youthful complexion.”
“You are making up a vampire story like Dracula,” I said, slightly petrified.
“Oh,” said my friend, “she is the inspiration behind Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Even vampirologist Raymond McNally in his book Dracula was a Woman, agrees with my idea.”
Victor came closer and said, “Do you know they invoke Bloody Mary by standing in front of the mirror and chanting her name in various ways? And then she stares at you from within the mirror.”
“Okay, okay, let’s concentrate on the drinks,” I said.
“Oh indeed. I must tell you that Bloody Mary has an amazing ingredient, the horseradish. It’s a spice, an aphrodisiac, a medicinal herb, and much more.”
“I didn’t know horses eat radishes. I have heard of rabbit and carrot, and can stretch it to rabbit and radish for the sake of onomatopoeia but this is too much.”
Victor said, “In German it was called meerrettich and the English made it mare-radish. The next generation turned the mare into a horse.”
“I think I am quite a horse in my head,” I said and drank quick shots to avoid more vampires.

the age of bicycles

Two weeks back, I was at Robin Cinema hall, where the manager gifted me three posters of B-grade films, souvenirs for life. When I asked him why the hall did not have posters, he said in earlier times, a groom got three things for dowry – HMT watch, Murphy radio and bicycle. All the bicycles were tied with a long chain and there was no need for a parking lot.

A week back I went with a friend to Daryaganj from ITO, to buy an African drum. On our way back, we decided to take a cycle rickshaw back. The distance is barely half a kilometer. The guy refused, “I had gone that side in the morning and the cops made me carry bricks on my rickshaw for four hours.”

Yesterday, I met Mark Tully and asked him how Delhi looked like in 1965. “Oh it was a city of bicycles,” his face lit up, “and there were rickshaws and tangas. Car was a vintage sort of a thing.”

Cycle market still exists in Jhandewalan and it seems they are doing good business, but one doesn’t come across even ten cycles during the day. Tully’s statement took me back to my school days, which is not very long ago, when we craved to buy the latest bicycles. I was incorrigibly envious of my brother because he owned a sleek BSA Street Cat while I had a regular Atlas model. He said he felt like Street Hawk on his Street Cat. I made up with my speed and I still like to believe that I used to cover five kilometers in five minutes. The parking lot had more cycles than the number of students, and pranksters would once in a week push a cycle, and everything would come crumbling down. This time when I went to school, there were the latest bikes, and cycles only a couple of dozens. Even campuses like JNU and IIT have lost their cycle; their pulse has shifted to Pulsar. I had inherited a cycle from an IIT friend who went to the US. I still proudly tell that my cycle was stolen in the first week of its inheritance. Now I leave my scooter here and there, but no one steals it.

A friend made a very interesting observation that as the wheels get broader, it gets tougher to paddle. The power then shifts to the fuel – who can buy how much fuel.

There is a sweet little song by Katie Melua which goes like this : There are nine million bicycles in Beijing / That's a fact / It's a thing we can't deny /Like the fact that I will love you till I die. The nine million cyclists of Peking are peddling their goods across the world. Very soon the two million cars of Delhi will have the Made in China tag, which everything else already has.

film review - the bong connection

Bong on Song

The Bong Connection
Director: Anjan Dutt
Cast: Shayan Munshi, Raima Sen, Peeya Rai Choudhuri, Parambrata Chatterjee, Victor Banerjee, Soumitra Chatterjee, June Maliah.

7 on 10

Bongs have bitter critics – in Bongs themselves. The first “Benglish” film reverberates with Bongs bashing Bongs – “you are an ass of a Bong”, “you are a commie from Kolkatta”, “you are a Bengali clerk” etc etc. One ABCD Bong (American Born Confused Desi) – Andy (Shayan Munshi) comes to Kolkata in search of his musical dreams. Another one, Apu (Parambrata Chatterjee), a software professional, goes to Texas in search of the American dream. Apu consciously remains a “Bengali though, as he tells his girlfriend Rita (Peeya Rai Chowdhary) that she’s a brat because she wears Western outfits. He has a girlfriend back home too, Sheela (Raima Sen) who wears sarees.

Andy comes to Kolkata and starts practicing with a local band. The old Bengali babus snore between practice sessions while he implores them to get on with the music. Frustrated, he goes to Shantiniketan, where he finds this Bengali rock band which is very popular but torn internally. He symolises the angst of the person who wants to return home but is frustrated with the stagnation of the place. The frames are brilliantly shot in Kolkata – it’s in colour but you get a feel of sepia, with the old wooden doors, old chattery Bengali men, large houses, all frustrated, and yet content. Andy falls in love with the place but gets no success. Finally, he gets a call from Mira Nair in Canada but is unwilling to go back as he’s fallen in love with both the soil and Sheela who’s still waiting for Apu. His uncle wants to sell off their ancestral property because he is a “Bengali clerk” and doesn’t want to put any effort into it.

On the other hand, the Bongs in America go through their own travails of trying to retain their identity and yet are wannabes. The issues of nostalgia, identity crises, racism, chasing a dream come through quite nicely. Reverse racism happens when Apu’s boss played by Victor Banerjee sacks his colleague when he coms to know he’s a gay. The stories of Kolkata and Texas are juxtaposed so close together that the tension keeps building up despite the humour. The self-critical “Bong” director and script writer knows all the “Bong jokes” and applies them with dexterous timing.

Bong or no Bong, it is eminently watchable for all, and the music that traverses between Bauls, Rock and ranindra sangeet is equally good.

Rains...

The black roads of Delhi that radiate heat like a car radiator, gather a thin film of water with the first rains, and reflect the sky laden with clouds. The air gathers an aroma, and you’re transported to some other time when it rained similarly. Rains induce an intriguing longing and nostalgia; it’s a time when you want to do everything else but work. You want to celebrate with the tears of heaven that find their way back to the sea through funnels, tunnels, rivers and rivulets. Delhi barely rains, and when it does, it’s worth becoming a peacock. Here is what we feel are the things to do when it pours in Delhi:

Chai, samosa, soup

There’s nothing like having chai, samosa, soup at home and staring out of the window, but if you are venturing out, which one must, then perhaps one must begin with Connaught Place. Driving around the round abouts in rains can be great fun unless they are all jammed. There’s this Tourist Restaurant in YMCA where you can look out into the greenery and rains and whizzing traffic while sipping on your tea. Eevening is the best time here, with the place lit with star-like lights and the glass panes shrouded with moisture on a rainy day. You could head to the Cha Bar in Oxford Bookstore at Barakhamba road and take your pick from a range of teas – masala, herbal, Darjeeling, ayurvedic. They also have huge glass panes that overlooks the outer circle. You can couch around and browse through books while sipping and staring out. Around CP, the other two places that synchronise themselves with the rainy day are the Terrace Garden in Triveni Kala Sangam, and the canteen at max Mueller Bhavan. The terrace garden is on the ground floor itself but the ambience is quite terrace like, with the grassy lawn contoured in levels. The bamboo chairs that overlook the lush greenery add to the whole look. It’s a small place but the variety of food is quite a lot, and quite reasonably priced.
Max Mueller is the pick of the lot, they have a whole range of items like sizzlers, Russian salad; their mint iced tea is a cool refresher.

Long drives

The pitter-patter of the rains, the wiper’s monotonous pendulous movement, or the droplets striking against your face if you’re biking, make you long for longer and longer drives. The best places to drive are the roads that run through the ridges. The stretch between Jhandewalan and Dhaula Kuan is amazing, it’s eight kilometers long and you can drive unabated, starting with the colossal Hanuman statue in whose heart pigeons reside instead of Sit and Ram. There is heavy greenery on both side and the leaf blades shine like pearls all along. Instead of going to Dhaula Kuan, swerve left to the road leading to Maurya Sheraton, and take a left again where you have to take a right for Maurya. Take a left again into the road that goes inside the ridge, and you’ll encounter Begum Sakina’s palace which we’ve written about earlier. Nearby is a mazar in the middle of the forest, and there’s nothing like visiting a mazar in the rains. You could also go to Nizamuddin and get into some trance with rain and qawwali at night. It doesn’t rain so much here, we know, but if it did, what would it be like. Get back to the main road and drive down Mother Teresa Crescent, the five kilometer long swirl where trees and vehicles pass you by, and you think you’re in some timeless zone. You can go back to Jhandewalan from here, and head to the North campus Ridge from Bara Hindu Rao. The roads are narrow here, but empty, and you cross historical monuments like the Mutiny memorial and Peer Ghayab. You could get own and walk on the pathways of the ridge, and then go to Kamla Nagar and sip chai at any of the umpteen stalls. The ridge in South around Vasant Kunj is also amazing. You could drive on the long stretch on Aruna Asaf Ali Marg or the narrow road that leads to Faridabad after Batra hospital. India Gate, of course is needless to mention. After all your drives you can participate in the mass rain dance there. Dance doesn’t really happen, but the mass is always there, you could induce one.

Words and melodies

If you are the indoor variety who admires the sound of the drizzle with the whirr of the fan, you can cuddle up and catch up with your old books. It’s always personal taste, so recommendations are silly, but try out The Little Prince on a rainy day. With the prince traveling to different planets, and he falling in love with a flower, and making his tea on a volcano, you might just like to be transported to worlds of fantasy. Or pick up any Marquez book, his words smell of the earth. Or read a book you read in childhood, rains are very nostalgia inducing. Music is even more personal, someone might like Pink Floyd with rain, and some may like just ghazals, some might like Rain is Falling Chama Cham Cham!! For me, it is 500 miles – Teardrops fell on mama’s note/ When I read the thing she wrote/ We miss you son we love you / Come on home.

Rain and pain are intrinsically intertwined, as are rain and celebration. It’s the time when the skies connect with the earth. So son’t pack yourselves inside your AC offices. Have a stomach ache and go out!

Riches to rags

In da house

For the past week, I’ve been crossing the subway of the fleet street, where all the newspaper offices are, to the other side where you get this amazing Neembu Shikanji Soda. They have their own concoction and have a big pamphlet about the benefits of the drink. Anyways, on that side of the road, in the afternoon, sits this kabadiwalla who keeps scribbling on paper. His clothes, his gunny bag, the paper he writes on are all in tatters. He keeps scribbling on paper in with a red pen in English, in a very small handwriting, and I try to peek in, and he stares back. One day I gathered the courage to ask what he was writing. All English went in thin air and he launched a volley of hardcore Haryanvi abuses.

I wonder what his story is. The last time I bumped into an English-speaking beggar was quite an intriguing experience. We had carried a story in the paper too. His name is nothing other then Dyer, speaks impeccable English, is an Anglo-Indian who had even served in the army. Linked to the word “Dyer”, I had come across this dyers’ shop in Calcutta, the window of which says: I live to dye, I dye to live, the more I dye, the more I live.

Another such riches to rags person is this lady who roams around in the Janpath market and asks in accented English for money. She tells you that the queen’s reign will come back one day, and she is collecting money to go see the queen. That’s where I learnt that she had written that poem: Where you been? To London to see the queen.

At Ganga dhaba in JNU, you’ll come across this old man, Vidrohi ji, who thinks one day there’ll be a red flag on the red fort. He sings revolutionary songs all night, and lives hand-to-mouth. He was a PhD student in the university.

Fact more often than not is more fictitious than fiction.

Egyptian Tanoura Dance

Whirls, twirls and rapture

Last week, ICCR organized a three day Sufi festival, out of which two were singing days with Begum Farida Khanum and Adil Barki respectively, and one was a dancing day with Tanoura dancers from Egypt. Kamani auditorium has never been so alive as on Friday when the Tanoura dervishes whirled everyone into a trance.

The performance began with singers singing and performing on their instruments. The most remarkable instruments are Ney, a flute variant, and the Algerian drum. Ney has a special significance, air has to be breathed in and out rather than blown into it. The wind passing through the flute is not just the breath of the player, but the breath of God. Once the breath enters the journeyer, symbolized by the dancer, the journeyer seeks union with God through the whirling movements. Modernisation affects everyone, and the group used a keyboard as well along with the traditional instruments. Once the mood was set, the dancers came in with their large, round, variegated skirts, and what followed was sheer visual delight. There is symbolism to all the movements of the dancers, which we can’t delve into, here. There was a central dancer around who the rest of the band whirled. It was like planets revolving around the sun. The whirling is continuous, long and varied. The skirt whirls at different angles, it’s even whirled over the head. When the dancer tilts at an angle where the right hand is raised up and the left almost touches the ground, it signifies a union of the heaven and earth.

After the dancers, the drummer came forward with his Algerian drum which looks like an oversized damru, but it’s variety is tremendous – it can produce a range of sounds. The drummer made the audience clap with his beats. It was as if the entire audience was on stage, clapping, dancing, chanting. This was followed by a girl making a human horse dance on stage. The black horse fainted after a while, and was revived by the girl’s kiss. The horse got down from the stage, went into the audience and kissed everyone. Besides, there were stick dances and other performances. The verve that the show generated is something one hasn’t observed even in a live rock performance. Don’t miss out a Tanoura performance if you ever get a chance.

Mystic Mountain – Mc Leod Ganj

Narrow winding roads through tea gardens, deep gorges with establishments in clutter in the distance, a bustling market when you reach the top of the hill where you can have fruit wines and Tibetan massage. Could there be a better getaway from the scorching city where you feel like breaking the red lights where you get baked? McLeod Gunj is now just two hours away with flights operating between Delhi and Kangra. From Kangra, you can take a cab for five hundred rupees that’ll take you to McLeod Gunj.

The place is quite crowded now in general, and this time of the year makes it even more crowded, there are long jams at times. The jams, however, do not take away from the charm, you can just walk it and enjoy the view while your cab trudges along. On top of the hill is Bhagsunag, where there’s a temple and a waterfall. This is the best place to stay as it’s less crowded than McLeod Gunj, and just fifteen minutes walk from there. One has to trek for half an hour to reach the falls; you can either walk along the path or walk through the rocks through which the river flows. People generally laze around on the rocks, couples lost in themselves, some taking a nap, or washing clothes, or drinking and dancing. Near the fall is a sheltered spot where people have painted graffiti on stones. The grafitti are beautiful – paintings, messages of peace and love. An elderly couple came and folded their hands at the spot. The wife asked, “Whose temple is this?” and the husband replied, “Yeh jal devta ka mandir hai.” At the fall, the water is so chilled that they cool their cold drink crates in that. The shower of the fall is blissful, and you can just hang around for hours there, and have refreshments as well at the two stalls nearby.

Downhill, the McLeod Gunj market bustles with activity. There are pamphlets advertising Tibetan massage for men and women- you can get massaged, you can learn it; you can learn astrology, feng-shui, languages, and hordes of things. The book shops are amazing, with unique books about Tibet, Tibetan astrology and odd second hand books which foreigners sell off. You’ll find many books in Hebrew too. For, the Israeli population is overwhelming, the market is full of Israelis shopping and biking around. A large number of foreigners ensures a tremendous variety of food in the restaurants. At Bhagsunag, the German bakery has Israeli, Tibetan, German and Indian foods, and priced very reasonably. You get fruit wines in McLeod Gunj as well, from rhododendron to apple to plum. One can also get a lot of jazzy and ethnic Tibetan costumes as well.

The main attraction of McLeod Gunj is the Dalai Lama monastery. There are several monasteries in the area. The one next to the market is an imposing structure with a series of good-luck wheels around it, and a numbers of monks chanting their mantras inside it. A little away is the Dal Lake, which is considered very holy. When you go boating, you have to take your shoes off at the bank. The lake is small and depleting, and needs a lot of maintenance. Do not confuse the hounds for dogs and try to shoo them here. They are real hounds! Down the hill from Dal Lake are a couple of resorts where you can chill out with a swim, massage, and beer. You have to go uphill again to reach the sunset point where you see little kids on horses going back to their international boarding school. The view from here is amazing, the telescope-wallas charge you ten bucks to show snow capped mountains.

There are hordes of places one can go to here, there are the tea gardens, monastries, endless number of temples. Our pick of the lot, however, is “St John’s Church in the Wilderness”. As you enter the place, a dog will bark at you and you’ll be freaked out, but it’s locked in a cage so you needn’t run away. It is really in the wilderness and very beautiful. It’s not an amazing piece of architecture aesthetically speaking, but its settings make it out-wordly with dense greenery at the edge of a deep valley, and the cemetery which has a thousand stories engraved on the graves. Here lies Lord Elgin, as well Lord Mc Leod himself. There’s a grave of a man who was killed by a bear, another grave of a soldier who died a day before his marriage. The church is in tatters and needs serious attempts at restoration.

At night, you can party in any of the hundreds of pubs around and eat and drink world cuisines and not empty your pockets. There are a couple of discs also, which play a lot of Punjabi music, they are the makeshift variety, and are great fun. You can watch movies in mini theatres where they play movies on DVDs.

Word Droppin11- Coulrophobia

Word dropping11

Coulrophobia

An Australian genealogist Victor and I became friends, trying to find out something about John Lang together. Lang was an Australian lawyer-writer who spent a large part of his life in India in the 19th century, and even fought Rani of Jhansi’s case against the East India Company. I did not know till I met Victor that “genealogist’ could be a profession.
“Well,” said Victor, when a friend and I met him for the first time, “the genealogy of the word genealogy is that it’s got a Greek genealogy. ‘Logos’ as you know is student, and ‘genus’ means generation. In a young country like Australia, everyone wants routes to their roots.”
We were at the Camel’s Back Cemetry in Mussoorie where Lang’s grave is. My friend trying to match the genealogist’s poetic penchant, said, “This cemetery has a lot of symmetry. Everything is so neatly laid out.”
Victor replied, “Not all cemetries are symmetrical my friend. And in some places, deliberately so. Some communities have been afraid of symmetry. It is called symmetrophobia.”
“That’s quite funny,” my friend said, “I have never heard of something like this. The best architecture is symmetrical, the best looking faces are the most symmetrical ones.”
“You need to learn a little more my friend,” Victor said, “ have you read Lindsay Jones’s The Hermeneutics Of Sacred Architecture: A Reassessment Of The Similitude Between Tula, Hidalgo And Chichen Itza? The Egyptian and Japanese deliberately keep their buildings assymetrical.”
I realised that we were entering into a dangerous territory and butted in, “We are at the grave but do we need to be so grave?”
Victor’s eyes suddenly lit up, “Do you know why the two ‘graves’ you used in your sentence have different meanings?”
“Well they have almost the same meaning,” I said, “both are depressing.”
“No,” said Victor, “the noun ‘grave’ where people sleep the longest slumber comes from Germanic and Gothic graban which means a ditch, whereas the adjective ‘grave’ for sombre expression comes from Latin ‘gravis’ which means, weighty and serious.”
“Your point has got quite some gravity,” I tried to be innovative.
“But you’ll realize the irony when you know that a similar sounding ‘gravid’ means preganat, because it comes from the Latin root. Grave and gravid, and vividly different meanings,” Victor said.
My friend was looking flummoxed and said, “Let’s go, or else the dead will turn in their graves. We will resurrect them with our chatter.”
“I am no resurrectionist,” said Victor and started laughing.
“Why are you laughing,” friend asked.
“Oh because it reminded me of Charlie Chaplin,” the Austrlian chuckled.
“Resurrection and Chaplin?” I asked
“Well, resurrectionist is a euphemism for grave robbers, and Charlie Chaplin’s grave was robbed. A couple of people kidnapped his dead body in hope of a ransom,” Victor said.
“Quite funny,” friend said, “they were bigger clowns than Chaplin. I’d rather stay away from such clowns.”
“Oh you have coulrophobia. You are afraid of clowns,” Victor said.
“Yes,” said the friend, and ran off pointing towards him.

dada never dies

Dada never dies

The queue was long. People waited patiently for their film tickets. “Bhai sahib yeh super hit film hai. Dekhe bina mat jaiye,” said one of the men standing in the queue. Outside the hall, there were a huge number of vehicles. The film was Pyar Ka Karz, the vehicles were cycle rickshaws, the day was yesterday. The venue was Hans Cinema, Azadpur Mandi where the 1990 film is running full house. The poster has a helicopter from which two ambassador cars are hanging amid flames, Dharmendra wielding a rocket launcher, Mithun firing bullets from a machine gun, Sonam firing oomph. By the way the user rating of this film on imd.com is 10 on 10. I won’t reveal the number of votes!

Hans is not a standalone. There are other movie halls in the national capital that survive on people’s appetite for B grade and M Grade (M grade is exclusively Mithun) despite the multiplexes that have devoured a huge number of these old halls.

Return of the bombs
We were inspired to go around check out these cinema halls because the bombs have returned in the market – in the form of Dharmendra’s rocket launchers, and human bombs in the form of the Sonams of the 1980s. Moser Baer has launched a number of CDs, mostly from the 80s and 90s with the Pyar Ka Karz profile. So on my last round to a posh music store I bought Atank Hi Atank (Aamir Khan, Rajnikant), Dance Dance (Mithun, Smita Patil), Roti Ki Kimat (Mithun), Izzat Ki Roti (Sunny) and Danveer (Mithun). The CDs come for Rs 28, and DVDs for Rs 34. And they are selling like momos. The CDs can also be bought off their website, www.moserbaerhomevideo.com , and there are no shipping charges if you order 20 or more titles. One can order 50 titles at one go, they are so fascinating. It’s been a while, and the company has launched videos in regional languages too, of which Tamil films are hotsellers.

We spoke to the CEO of Moser Baer Home Video, Mr G Dhananjayan, who tells that the trade is doing well in all states. They’ve launched over 300 titles in Hindi films, out of which 100 are doing very well. “In videos, 60 per cent of the business comes from old catalogues and the rest from new films. While super hit to hit films are selling in major cities, the B & C grade films (with violence and sex) sell mostly in smaller towns and villages. Hence, overall, there is a market for all catalogue titles in India,” he tells. Their plans are ambitious and they’ll soon acquire rights for over 7000 films. The prices are bound to come down.

Sarkar ka darbar
Back to Hans, which has to be commended on its sense of discipline. People stand in queues patiently, they are scanned while entering and have to forfeit their guthkas and bidis. Of late Bhojpuri films have been doing well as well, and Bhojpuri stars have come and performed here. “There are only two kinds of films that run packed house here – Mithun and Bhojpuri,” the manager tells.

A little distance away on the main road is Akash cinema hall, which is not a Mithun specialist like Hans, but runs old movies too. There’s Metro construction going on there, so the business is low. But the trade at a CD store next to the hall is unaffected. Why? Because they have one rack full of Mithun, and another full of Bhojpuri films. “Mithun to hamare sarkar hain. Roti inhi se chalti hai. Amitabh aur baki sab to kuch nahi hain inke saamne,” the shop owner says. Bhojpuri is not just famous in its belt that is Azadpur, but the CDs sell at the stalls at Nizamuddin dargah as well.

The cabin in Robin
We head back on the Hans road, cross Pratap Bagh, where there are ancient gates under which the road passes. The gates are a shelter to pigs, cows, men and excreta of all three species, and the gates have a huge notice, “Those who deface the monument will be fined Rs 5000.” As we reach Ghantaghar, there is Amba cinema hall on the right. It’s also one of those old halls, but manages to run mainstream movies. A little ahead after the round about is Robin. You can easily miss it; it’s in the heart of the crowded lane of Subzi Mandi and just a small iron gate leads inside.

Inside, it expands all of a sudden. We are welcomed by the ticket distributor, who also turns out to be the manager. The film playing by the way is Sunny starrer Izzat Ki Roti. The manager, however, is finding it hard to survive on his Izzat ki roti, for he earns Rs 3965 as his salary after having worked there for 28 years. Only forty tickets have sold today, and Sharma sighs that it’s not long before the hall might have to close down. They rent a film for Rs 4000, and get about around eight times on that still. I advise him that he should get more Mithun films, which he notes down seriously. I ask why there’s no parking lot around. “In the old days, people used to get three things for dowry – Murphy radio, HMT wrist watch, and bicycle. So they used to come rising on cycles, and for that you do not need a parking lot,” he chuckles. Food for thought. Most old halls do not have a proper parking lot.

The manager presents us with three posters as we promise to come back next week for a show – Pyaasi Haveli (Ramsay Bros.), Sone Pe Suhaga (Dharmendra, Jeetendra, Anil Kapoor!), Karz (Sunny, Sunil Shetty).

So the deal is clear, either buy from the deluge of these CDs or head to Hans and Robin. And remember there’s no parking!

Loco Foco

word dropping10

I did not the credentials of Prem ji until that day. Prem ji sells cigarettes in a university and keeps reading Hindi thriller novels of the Atank Hi Atank types at the same time. That is his eyes do not waver from his book while he is giving you the fare. I walked up to his shop with a friend who was slightly delirious because he’d been awake a couple of days writing his M Phil thesis. So the friend says to Prem ji, “Monsieur, for the sake of the equipoise of my bleary eyes and weary life, can you please give me some fine blended tobacco rolled in fine paper, and backed with a filter that can reduce its carcinogenic effect?”
Prem ji put a pan inside his mouth and for the first time I heard him speak English, “Well, the cancer stick will remain a cancer stick. And will stick to you, you see. After all the word cancer itself comes from ‘crab’.” Saying this, he handed over the lightest cigarette available, to my friend.
Friend was flummoxed. He said to Prem ji, “Oh you can pun too.”
And pat came the reply, “And I can have fun too. Because I do not smoke like you. I just have paan. So I was telling you that cancer is related to crabs. You must be knowing, you guys read all that fluff – Linda Goodman’s Sunsigns and all.”
“How do you know?” Friend said.
“I know who reads what,” said the vendor, and continued, “Greek physician Galen noted the similarity in some tumours with swollen veins and the crabs. And so he named the disease after the Greek word karinos, which now means a crab, a tumour and a sunsign. I tell you English is such a funny language.”
It was quite windy and my frind wasn’t able to light his cigarette. So Prem ji took it, put it in his mouth lifted his head and lit the match against the wind, which blew the fame towards the cigarette and lit it. Style.
“A fortune is to be made against the wind,” he said after lighting and handing over the stick to friend. Friend stared and Prem ji said, “Rhett Butler’s dialogue from Gone in the Wind. That’s how I learnt how to light a cigarette when it’s windy. But you are weak hearted. You need a loco foco.”
“Now what’s that?” I asked.
“Well it’s a self-lighting cigarette. Foco is from Spanish fuego for fire. And loco they didn’t know stood for place and not for ‘self’. In a New York assembly the lights went out, and they used such matches. It was 1837.”
“Prem ji how do you know so much,” I was incredulous.
“Well I was also a PhD student here,” he said, “And I realised I want to stay here and just read books all my life. But my choices have changed as you can see.”

Meeting Paradoxes

Hunting stories for a special issue on Delhi, I met paradoxes. Human paradoxes. In CP, we came across this shop that declared itself “the smallest studio of the world”, and the pictures hanging outside were of the owner with the biggest Bollywood stars. Inquisitive, I asked the Sikh gentlemen standing outside how he managed to get clicked with the who’s who. “We are in the media ji,” he replied. “ Freelancer, you mean,” I asked. “I am not a freelonser. I am media,” he grumbled. We asked him for his card, he said he doesn’t give cards. Smallest studio, biggest stars, no cards.
We walked a little ahead and found two guys cycling for world peace. Lokbandhu and Vishvabandhu are their names, they have traveled the entire South east Asia and plan to keep cycling for world peace for the next five years. They are the bandhu of the entire world, but themselves in tattered condition and complained of financial problems. It seems their government is not quite their bandhu.
The next day we were hunting for a mosque built by Ghulam Qadir Rohilla’s father, around India gate. On reaching Pandara Road, at a newspaper stall, I chanced upon this old man with thick white moustache, white kurta and lots of photographs pinned to his kurta. An identity card said “ freedom fighter” and the photos were of him with Sonia Gandhi and Sheila Dixit and other top Congress leaders. After a little chat in which he was very reticent, he said I hate the media and I hate politicians.” I pointed out that he was very lovingly carrying those people on his chest who he hated. “what will you know. You were not even born,” was his reply as he walked away.
Next, in the mosque hunt, we reached the mosque where an old man – not the imam, but someone hanging around told us that taking pictures was prohibited by religion. A while later, I clicked his picture, and he smiled and posed for it.

Draked

word droppin 9

DRAKED

This weekend I went to Dharamshala on a junket. To our surprise, we discovered that we’d not be staying in a hotel but at the bunglow of a herbal-medicine-would-be-baron whose herbs we had gone to check out. There were twelve guys and a couple of scientists, and we were packed off in two rooms, so we chose to sleep under the open sky on rooftop. I am in reverie whenever I am with stars or rains, and so I mumbled to myself, “If there are so many stars, with so much light, why is the night sky, not bright?” “You are talking about Olber’s paradox aren’t you?” came a voice that was a paradox for me, for I could see no one. I turned around to see Dr Bhoon smiling through his long white beard.
“I don’t know any Olber,” I said.
“Well you have coincidentally said what one of the most profound scientists said. Olber proposed that if it is an infinite universe with infinite number of stars, the luminosity should be enough to keep the night bright,” the scientist chuckled.
“I did not know that poets and scientists think alike,” I said.
“What do you think about aliens?” the professor asked me.
“Well they never land in Delhi. They land only in the land of Donald Duck. By the way it should be Donald Drake and not duck,” I smiled.
“You sure are a science student my boy,” the prof was enthusiastic, “you know about the Drake equation as well.”
“Well a drake should get a duck, he should have that much luck, that’s the drake equation,” I said.
“ You must be kidding me,” the prof gleamed, “Drake was the man who proposed an equation to find out the number of planets that extra terrestrial life. It is also discussed in Frederick Pohl’s “Fermi and Frost” where technically advanced civilizations destroy themselves.”
“Sir can we move beyond drakes, ducks, dolphins?” I said a little irritated.
“Oh you know the Order of the Dolphin too. The famous ten people who decided to find out more about the drake equation and possibility of extra terrestrial life. You sure are kidding me,” the prof said.
“I wish dolphins turned horses and ran away,” I said.
“You know cetology too!” the prof exclaimed, “in the medieval records, the cetologists who study whales and dolphins, say they encounter names like red whales and horse whales.”
I had to run like a horse to the garden before he declared me a Nobel winner.

lord bhairav and charonian steps

I went with Lord Bhairav and his favourite student Leela to watch aplay called B Three or BBB. Lord Bhairav is a Bhairav reincarnate –his real name is Bhairav Nath Burmula – huge frame, flowing manethat's turning grey now, teeth stained with too much smoking,bloodshot eyes. When he gets passionate, he can put Browning to shamein the art of dramatic monologue. Both the Lord and Lord's Leela coulddrop words like bullets in a video game, and I hang around with themfor wisdom. Before watching the play, they were speculating on whatBBB could possibly mean."Baroque of a baffled bubble," Leela chuckled, seeing me blowing a chewing gum.The bubble of my gum burst in a second, "Now kindly don't baffle mebefore a nice play," I said.Lord looked towards me and said, "She'll become a real academician.She uses theatrical terms so creatively. Did you know that "bubble" isa jargon used for the lamps in a play? Did you know that "baffle" is atimber box on which the speakers are kept so that other surfaces don'treflect the sound and spoil the effect?""I am baffled to know such a meaning of "baffle", sir," I said.Leela paid the least heed to me and continued with her reverie, "Oh Iwish the play is a baroque. I so love the baroque theatrical form,with its elaborate stages. Unlike other forms where you have toconcentrate on the plot and the characters all the time, this is coolfor the other senses. The scene changes from lovers in meadows, topalaces of kings, to beggars in dingy alleys. Done through sets thatchange so fast. Like films, and much better than films."Lord Bhairav chipped in, "Baroque comes from ancient Portugese wordbarroco which means a pearl of an uneven but elaborate shape.""What's an out-of-shape pearl got to do with all this," I asked."Shut up," grumbled the lord, "you'll never understand metonymies andmetaphors."So I shut up and we went into the play. The play's plot was about ateacher experimenting on students by regimenting them into a littlearmy, filling them with hatred against anyone who was not like them.He wanted to teach them the meaning of Nazism through this experiment.The experiment goes out of hand, and his students form their BlackBoard Brigade and not 'baroque of a baffled bubble'. This brigade isintolerant, coercive and violent. "Nice play sir," I whispered."Stanislavski would have been so happy to see them perform. Methodacting to the core," the lord whispered back." You should have invited Stanislavski also sir," I said, thinking hemust be one of his firang friends."Shut up," the lord almost roared, and everyone turned back. He calmeddown and whispered, "Stanislavski was a theorist. He postulated thatactors must remember their own experiences and reproduce thoseemotions while emoting the part of a character. That is methodacting."In the last scene, where a brainwashed student kills another becausehe doesn't conform to the former's ideas, Leela was almost in tears.She said, "Sir, had I been the director I would have used adeux-ex-machina or charonian steps but somehow I would find catharsisfor this denouement."I opened my notebook and looked at the lord. "Deux-ex-machina is whenGods descended literally on the stage to help out the hero in crisis.Charonian steps are under the stage, and the gods of the underworldemerged from those in Greek theatre to save the hero. Denoument is theuntying of the plot. And catharsis is relief. Now shut up and provideme some catharsis," the lord was visibly angry with me.And I hoped that a deux-ex-machina or gods clambering from charoniansteps would come and take me away from Lord and his Leela.

Gunjon ka Gunj Pahargunj

Pahargunj: Storehouse of stories

The English had imported the suffix "Gunj" from Egypt's "Geniza", meaning a storehouse, and strewn the suffix liberally all over India. By that, Pahargunj would mean storehouse on a mountain. It is, rather, a mountain of a storehouse. In the crammed lanes you get everything from Hare Krishna tees, to Che Guevara bags, to weed, to leather boots, to trinkets, to books and music from across the globe, to 'Hotel Decent'. And you can also buy whips of leather for your sadistic boss and your masochistic self!

Pahargunj is also a geniza of stories. They are unending and fascinating, like the one we did yesterday about a Hollander having married a beggar in Pahargunj. The buildings are so clustered that it’s tough to discern one from the other. But one building is very striking- the one that houses Camran Lodge. It’s built in marble, and has fine embellishments to it. The building pulled us in. Faiz Farooqui, who runs the lodge, told us about the history of the place, which is very much a micro picture of what was happening in 1947. It was intended to be a mosque, and was being built by a tribe of Muslim stone carvers who stayed in the then predominantly Muslim Pahargunj. Partition happened, the Muslims of the area had to pack up, and the Hindus from Pakistan came in. The building was occupied by the refugees then, and later “anti-social” elements occupied it till the late 1970s till Fakhruddin Ali Ahmad’s helped in having it vacated. The top floor is now used as a mosque, the outer cubicles as shops, and the rest as the lodge. It was meant to be a “Muslim musafirkhana” specifically as approved by the Waqf board, but of late the lodge runners have started letting it out to everyone, “minus the criminals,” Farooqui tells. The rates are dirt cheap for staying in the lodge, starting from hundred rupees.

We walk on, and see the demography of the area changed in a peculiar manner. The bustling streets have always been known for a cosmopolitan crowd, but fifty per cent of the foreign populace is now Israeli, we are told by a bookseller, whose shelves are stacked with books in Hebrew. As you walk further into the market, you’ll notice shops with Hebrew signboards. McLeod Gunj is known for Israeli visitors, but even there you won’t find Israeli signboards. You’ll see STD booths specifically shouting “Call Israel at 7 rupees a minute”. We walked into a leather shop with a Hebrew signboard. It’s run by Kashmiris who came here 20 years ago, and they have “good relations with the Israelis,” the owner says.

When enough of dekko has been done, and you're in a "thought for food" mode, you'd discover that food festivals are not the only place that offer world cuisine. As we said, Pahargunj has it all. You get Israeli, Russian, Lebanese, Itlaian, Spanish menus all rolled into one, in most restaurants. We hopped into Sam's Café, a rooftop restaurant. A rooftop with flowers and green grass in Pahargunj is the rarest sight. They have French, American, Isreali and other breakfasts; but we started with Milky Potato soup, (must be a Russian one), which was warm, creamy, yum.

Ajay Guest House is a stone's throw away, and besides the German bakery that they have, there is a cool leather goods shop, and a painter who does trance paintings-smoking Rishis, purple witch and all that including many reproductions of Dali. The bakery also offers a multinational variety with pancakes, muselis, lasagne, pizzas and more. And there are a hundred bars with beer almost a marked price. The next time you’re planning an adventurous evening, you know where to go.

pan-opt-icon

I went to see an art exhibition with two high flyers, a poet by the name of ‘Tanha’, and a historian-in-the-making who the poet called ‘Kanha’ for his way with words and girls, and to rhyme with the way he pronounced ‘Tanha’ in his American accent. The exhibition had 19th century paintings of Victorian women. “They are still celebrating the lores and mores of socio somatic snobbery,” said Tanha, almost disgusted.
“I don’t know what that means but your language sounds snobbish to me,” I chuckled.
“Well, he is right,” Kanha came on his side, “these Victorian women were trained to have hourglass figures, to wear tight robes that would stifle them, to sing, to dance to please the men. And the man would then make paintings of them. And the dainty women would faint on the slightest sign of bad air or bad news. They had to faint, otherwise they were not ‘ladies’.”
“In other words, the fainty snobbery of the dainty women was a social phemomenon,” Tanha recited.
“And they would have to be brought back to their senses by smelling salts, also called salts of hartshorn,” Kanha said.
“Heart’s horn sounds interesting to me. The men’s heart in depression over their beloved’s fall would make them blow a horn. What a metaphor,” I said, hoping to get a compliment from the poet.
“Nincompoop,” said the poet, “hart is a male deer from whose antlers ammonia is produced, from which smelling salts are made.”
“I am sorry, but I thought you’d like my little lovelorn ghazal,” I said apologetically.
“Did you know that ghazal comes from gazelle, or kasturi mrig. It is once in many years that a deer gets kasturi in its belly. And it knows it is doomed, going to be hunted down. It’s cry is the spirit a ghazal tries to capture,” Tanha said, almost in tears.
“Tanha, my friend, don’t weep here,” I said, “they have CCTVs here.”
“Oh the panopitcon,” said Kanha, “Jeremy Bentham dead is more powerful than Jeremy Bentham alive.”
“I had heard that about Julius Caesar, but what about Bentham?” I asked
“Well he designed a prison in which the jailer could watch everyone from a tower, but the prisoners could not either see each other or if anyone was sitting in the tower.”As we walked out, Tanha chewed on a pan, and spat it on the wall near the gate, and said, “No panopticon can stop me from spitting the pan.”

Sutta Monger

In da house

My friend Vikram smokes costly cigarettes. A single cigarette can cost thousands, he’s such a connoisseur.

The costliest he smoked was in a train. Those were the days when smoking wasn’t banned in trains. So he stood at the door, with earphones in his ear that were singing retro songs to him courtesy the walkman that was strapped to the belt above the left pocket. He thought it would be a great idea to inhale the fresh air of the endless plains and exhale his beloved ‘smoke’. So he put his hand in his pocket, took out a cigarette, lit it, puffed in. After a while he realized that the song had stopped playing. He reached for his walkman. As he was taking out his cigarette, the instrument decided to go for a walk in the UP plains, courtesy the pull of his hand. His was shaken but not stirred, and finished his sutta. It was a borrowed walkman, and the cigarette cost him Rs 2503.

Another costly smokey affair was again to do with a train. After long days of wandering during the vacation, Vikram had fifty bucks left in his pocket, just the right amount to take a general ticket back home from his last wandering spot. He had gone there to meet a friend who had a dialogue from Sholay for every situation in life. Vikram didn’t know there had been a train fire a few days back, and that inhaling the plains and puffing out tobacco was no longer possible. So, waiting for the train, he lit up a cigarette. Four cops pounced upon him together to collect their booty. Booty he had none, and so he refused to stop smoking, and offered to go to the jail. Friend’s friend had to come. He said, “Ab tera kya hoga kaalia,” but after joking a bit, paid for him. That sutta cost him Rs 203.

Another time, my friend acquired a new pair of frameless glasses. He used to go back to his flat at ten every night after dropping his girlfriend to her paying guest accommodation. Good boy didn’t smoke in front of her, but ran every day after dropping her, to a sutta shop that used to close five minutes after her place. That day either her PG shut later, or the shop shut earlier, but he saw the shutter coming down, and ran like Ben Johnson. Off went the specs, but he got his smoke. That cigarette cost him Rs 1003.

Surreal and Sadiyal

Gunda is a cult classic, and I being an AC of Gunda and Mithun da, had written a long article about Gunda fan club which worships the movie that has three rapes, thirteen murders and all dialogues in rhymes. The IITians had started the fan club, and so I was invited to their campus by a five-point-someone (FPS) for a screening of Loha, the complementary movie of Gunda. In one sequence, Shakti Kapoor comes to the adda of the villain and declares that he has tied bombs all around him and he’ll blow the place. So he blows the bomb and himself, and everybody else is left laughing.
“Quite a sadiyal movie,” I said, “How can a suicide bomber blow up while the rest are left blowing up their chewing gums?”
“That’s the beauty my friend. It is not sadiyal, it is surreal. It’s psychedelic, it’s science fiction, it is…”“Chill, I said. What is so surreal about it? Mithun da just must have decided that he’ll kill the villain, so he changed the script.”
“Come on, can’t you see the very elementary things,” FPS retorted.
“It is alimentary for sure. My alimentary canal and stomach are churning after seeing these random scenes,” I said.
“Come on dude. Surrealism is the reality. There are surreal numbers as well. Did you know there is a book called Surreal Numbers: How Two Ex-Students Turned on to Pure Mathematics and Found Total Happiness by Donald Knuth? It is the first novel arguably where mathematical concepts were presented through fictional tale,” FPS puffed on his cigarette with glee.
“And what could surreal numbers possibly be?” I asked, perplexed.
“Any number. Rational, irrational, infinitesimal, real, unreal,” he replied.
“Any number is surreal? That means all things real are surreal?” I exclaimed.
“Exactly,” said my friend, “you what Dali had said when he was called an eccentric? He said, ‘There’s only one difference between the madman and me. I am not mad.’”
“Yaar tum to dada ho,” I chuckled.
“Ya ya I believe in Dadaism, but not so much as in surrealism. The Dadaists believed that too much rational thought had brought about the misery of the world. They protested but did not evolve new forms, you see.”
I had figured out Gandhigiri a few days back but did not know they already had a counter-weapon in Dadaism.

beauty and the beast

We had the film Frankenstein for our film and literature course. The brightest girl in the class, Jharna, could be quite eponymous while watching horror films. So, behind her specs, she had a jharna flowing from her eyes. She twitched her fingers, occasionally plucked on the neighbour’s sleeve, and watched with rapt attention – one with the film.

So we teased her. “You are an unfeeling brute, what will you understand,” she retorted. “Come, it’s just one of those regular old horror films. It doesn’t even match the horror of the technology driven horror films of now,” I said. Another friend commented that a 19th century novel with funny English of that time isn’t quite indulging. He would realize very soon what it is like to pull a scholar into such a discussion.

“Did you know that the novel by Mary Shelley on which this film is based is the beginning of the genre of horror?” she asked.
“Might be,” my friend said, “but a woman cannot conjure up stories like say Bram Stoker’s Dracula.”“You are a thorough patriarch,” she said, “Did you know that this novel is a statement against patriarchy by Mary Shelley?”
That we didn’t know, for all that the novel is about is a war between Frankenstein, the scientist, and the monster he has created out of dead people. It’s about only men, so how could it possibly be a statement against men?
“Mary Shelley’s father William Godwin was believer in Utopia. But Utopia, which is often considered idyllic is not quite idyllic. There’s quite a lot of politics to it. Godwin’s utopia proposed that there’ll be world full of men who will live happily with themselves. It shows the kind of hold men have had over academia to have ignored this fact for so long,” she said.
“The monster in Frankenstein is a manifestation of that,” she continued, “a man making a man. Against nature’s law. And see what happens to that world. Mary was her mother’s daughter. Mary Wollstonecraft was the first one to write about the vindication of the rights of women.”
“But why were you crying so much then if the movie is against patriarchy,” I asked.
“Because poor Frankenstein is hounded so badly by the monster,” she replied.

The story after Tees January

History has been written uptill Gandhi, and history is still Gandhi. There have been many books about Gandhi in the past few months. Tushar Gandhi feels it is coincidental with writers and deliberate with publishers post-Munnabhai. Ramachandra Guha won’t be happy with this introduction, for he insists that his new book India After Gandhi is not about Gandhi. “The keyword is ‘after’ and not ‘Gandhi’,” he says, “no one has taken post-independence history seriously. Historians are obsessed with Gandhi. History ends at January 30, 1948.I have spent years researching and thinking.”

Guha is precise in saying this, for the book is humungous, and deliberates upon issues and events at great length. Guha says he has a deep and abiding interest in Gandi, but the time after him has been ‘not studied and misunderstood.” There has been criticism, particularly by Amit Chaudhuri, that Guha hasn’t said much about cultural forms. “This is Bengali criticism,” Guha retorts, “No work of history is ever complete. Whatever you write, there’ll be such criticism. I took eight years to write these 800 pages.”

Guha has been a voracious writer of non-fiction, but to the question of venturing into fiction, he says, “it is beyond my competence. There is no dearth of historical books to write. It is very fortunate for a historian to be born in India.”

Does Guha, an alumnus of St. Stephen’s, believe in something called the Stephanian school of writing? “ In that college I learnt nothing about scholarship,” he chuckles, “it’s my years in Calcutta, Uttaranchal and Bangalore that have shaped me as a writer.” In college he was “a second class economics student and a second class cricketer,” and was therefore just “happy”. After the happy holidays, he ventured into serious scholarship that’s produced books on ecology, cricket, a biography of a missionary who settled in India, and more.

Every Indian is a scholar on Indian politics, and therefore this book is not to be missed to add to your scholarship.

Meeting a namesake

It was the fourth time I was meeting Vikram Seth after we had decided that March the 13 was an auspicious day. The other three had been professional visits, and this time he was on a personal visit to home. At the first meeting, he was excited that I was his namesake, for he was called Amit in his childhood. I never had thought before this that Amit is a very exciting name, for whenever you turn back hearing this name, someone else is being called. It is a coincidence that a series of short stories that I had written have a common protagonist called Vikram. Interestingly, there’s a Vikram Seth poem called Distressful Homonyms, and I am more than tempted to quote the first six lines from the poem:

Since for me now you have no warmth to spareI sense I must adopt a sane and spare Philosophy to ease a restless stateFuelled by this uncaring. It will state A very meagre truth: love like the restOf our emotions, sometimes needs a rest.

So we met to exchange greetings and ideas two days before the Ides of March at his Noida house. I cannot reach on time. So even though I had been waiting for days, I did not reach on time, and told him the traffic police had foiled my efforts. His wry smile told me he thought otherwise, but he was least irritated. “Let’s take a walk in the park, otherwise we’ll not be able to talk,” he said. So we went to the park and again decided that clockwise was a better direction to move in.

The subject of being Humnaan always comes in, and I was reminded of the poem quoted above. “Oh that was written when I was your age you know, the time when one is lovelorn,” he chuckled. His looked off into another time. I wondered what it would have been to drop out of a Stanford PhD after ten years of being in it, to decide to take destiny’s call of being a writer, when you were already past your twenties.

Vikram listened to me intently as if I were a close friend as I rambled about Alice’s grave in Pune with haunting epitaph, an Anglo-Indian beggar who spoke queen’s English, a military coup in a steel city, short story as a lost form. And he gave me the first lesson on becoming a writer, “When you staple pages, do not staple them diagonally on the left hand corner. They tear away.” I had taken a book for an autograph in which he signed as ‘Amit.’

Only Dr Joy

Election or no election, the city is strewn with posters of strange leaders with strange names, grinning teeth, folded hands, thanking Sonia Gandhi for something else or the other. If there’s one person that deserves posters across the city, it is Doctor Joy. ‘Only Doctor Joy’, the poster would shout. Head shaved closer than the cheek, thick specs, grim expression, thick drool, bloodshot eyes, cigarette dangling from the lips. Foucault’s reincarnation. But if you call him Mogambo, he’ll say, “Dr Joy dukhi hua”. So stick to Foucault. If any party needs a giant killer to defeat Sonia Gandhi or Vajpayee, call Doctor Joy.
The campaigning done, I must return to Dr Joy’s class. A very old and famous college, in an old and famous city, the classrooms still have wooden platforms. One fine morning Dr Joy walks in, and the terror struck students quietly take their seats. Dr Joy stares at them, and then his red eyes look in the distance. He lights his cigarette. He bangs his foot on the wooden platform. Everyone’s heart misses a couple of beats. “What happened,” Dr Joy’s voice quivers.
We stare at each other, our head hangs. None of us knows the mistake that has invited his wrath.
Dr Joy breaks the silence, “The earth is shaking. The oceans are shaking. The trees are shaking.” Under the doctor’s spell, might be we had missed the earthquake. The doctor continues, “The very being is shaking. Life is cruelty. Death is cruelty. Taking breath is cruelty.” I scratch the table with my fingers in anticipation of the cruelty that the doctor might unleash. The doc speaketh again, “It is all cruelty. From today we will study Antonin Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty.”
We were supposed to be reading Vijay Tendulkar’s Ghashiram Kotwal but that did not surface in the next three months. “This shall sort you out and being,” was what the doc said if you brought up the subject matter. The name of the playwright was quite a tongue twister, it was Aa-kh-hto and not Ar-tau, and we got snubbed quite a few times for getting it wrong. Artaud looks somewhere between Foucault and Dr Joy, by the way. “We are determined to shatter false realities,” Dr Joy said at the end of the course. We did that by buying guides on Ghasiram Kotwal that could see us through to another year.

On the trail of a frail's man's foretold murder

There’s so much iron underneath the earth’s surface that ironies never fail to erupt. Gandhi’s famous last word “Ram” also happened to be his murderer’s name. Nathuram was not born with the name. Three of his elder brothers had died very young, and his father was told that no male child could survive in his family. And therefore, if a boy was born, he’d have to be brought up as a girl to fool destiny. So, a boy was born and was named Ramchandra but he was given a nose ring or a ‘nath’ to fool destiny. Children teased him as Nathuram, and he officially became that. He wanted to prove that he was a man. And the way he did it, on 30th January 1948, changed the course of history.

A death foretold
Another irony is that Tushar Gandhi’s book Let’s Kill Gandhi has received a lot of flak, but it so intrigued us that it set us groping for places where the conspiracy to kill Gandhi shaped up. The book reminds one of A Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Marquez where it’s known to everyone except the victim that he’s going to be killed. There’s a sense of frustration as one reads that between 20th January and 30th January 1948, the entire nation’s police could not pin down a bunch of amateur conspirators despite having sufficient leads. On 30th January, pamphlets announcing Gandhi’s murder were distributed three hours before the killing at Alwar. The ‘plot’ part of the book reads like a thriller, though one would agree with candid Tushar that he is ‘no great shakes as a writer.’

The killer car
The ‘plot’ in the book, which has also been enacted in Hey Ram, took us to the places where the conspirators stayed. The conspirators had stayed in Marina Hotel in CP when they were planning the killing to happen to happen on the 20th. On that day, they burst two cotton slabs meant to create commotion at Birla House, after which Badge was supposed to shoot from the grills of a servant quarter. They panicked and none of the conspirators shot. The car in which they had come and fled, was a Ford or a Studebaker, Tushar tells us. It was a blue-green “moongia” car, and unlike most cars in Delhi then, it had a carrier on its top. In the book, the writer tells us that it’s with a car collector in Lucknow, but in conversation he says that someone later told him that it was spotted in a vintage car rally in Delhi.

Marina
Coming back to Marina, it’s a plush hotel on the outer circle of CP today, with all the colonial artefacts – the arches, the pillars intact. Interestingly, a dental surgeon operates out of the place as well. We could not manage to get permission to shoot inside Room No 40. Tushar says the room doesn’t exist any longer, for when Kamal Hassan was planning to shoot there for Hey Ram, he learnt that the building houses a magazine company now. Anyways, coming back to the conspirators, it is here that they had checked in on 17th January 1948, Nathuram as M. Deshpande and Narayan Apte as S. Deshpande. However, when they were running off Nathuram left his shirt behind with the washerman with the real initials “NVG” which would become his undoing. They also left behind a press release by Asutosh Lahiri of Hindu Mahasabha denying his pledge of peace to Gandhi. He had pledged peace alongwith many leaders to make Gandhi break his fast-unto-death just days before.

Just as we were entering Marina, we had spotted a pair of shattered glasses. I clicked a picture. Interestingly, Gandhi’s glasses were never found after his death. When we were coming out the glasses were missing! Tushar chuckles, “This is my purpose, that your generation can connect with that moment.”

The only surviving witness

We go to Old Delhi thereafter, where most of the action happened in the next round when the murder happened. After their first attempt, Madanlal Pahwa was caught and the conspirators were wary, so most of them stayed at the old Delhi railway station abuzz with refugees, so they wouldn’t be detected. They got their pictures clicked in a studio, the name of which is not known now. We had an altercation in the retiring room in which they stayed, for ‘one doesn’t know these days who is who’ as the policeman put it. The other places the conspirators stayed in were Sharif Hotel in Fatehpuri, which doesn’t exist anymore.

The other place they stayed in was Frontier Hindu Hotel, near St. Stephen’s Church. It’s called New Frontier Hotel now. The owners are from North West Frontier Province, and therefore the name; and assertion of identity was also important in times of incendiary circumstances. Though, obviously they did away with the ‘Hindu’ tag after they had the infamous guests. The owner J. Bajaj told us it’s difficult to operate in the area as they have to be very discreet about which guests to entertain. They have a CCTV network to ensure they do not fall into a trap. When we mention his infamous visitors, he chuckles, “Oh, you also know. I got to know of it very late, not from my family but from a friend.” He is fond of historical research himself but is in a dilemma if this revelation would hamper his business. History, notoriously, is not about the past. We were in luck, for Mr Bajaj had an important visitor in his hotel – 85-year-old Ramprakash Matta, who was the manager of the hotel on Januiary 20 1948, when Gopal Godse had checked in as Rajagopalan, and Karakare as G.M.Joshi when they were fleeing after the failed attempt. The octogenarian says he remembers nothing of that time. He remembers his partition flight from Kohat to Rawalpindi to Anritsar to Jalandhar to Delhi very well though. Some memories are best buried, for as we said, history is not just about the past.

The fascist special
Beretta 9mm was the gun used to kill Gandhi. Before this gun was acquired at the last minute – Nathuram didn’t even know how to use it- there were two guns and both were not working. The Beretta, Tushar tells us in an interview, was used by Mussolini’s army in World War II, and had taken a long route to reach Godse. It was called the Fascist Special. The fascist gun that killed the pacifist, now lies in the Gandhi Museum in Delhi.

Daler Paa ji's Pop Sufism

The other day, our editor showed me a clipping of Murli Qawwal’s performance on youtube.com. In the small clipping, the Lucknow-based qawwal demonstrates the technique and power of repetition and chanting of phrases, one of the most powerful and potent tools of the genre. Apparently, Ustad Nusrat fateh Ali Khan was a fan of Murli. This is written in the caption of the clipping that is more than thirty years old, with a bedsheet on the wall, and the singers lookingly visibly ‘not-well-off’.

The other image of a qawwal that’s struck me is that of the singers at Haji Ali in Mumbai. The blind father and his son sing in the afternoons and get some alms for their performance from the visitors. A R Rahman’s Piya Haji Ali is most probably inspired from their singing style. I spend the entire afternoon listening to them whenever I am in Mumbai.

Qawwali’s taqdeer is no longer stuck with the faqeer image; it has had its renaissance to the extent that it’s now a fad. When I met Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, he said he was happy that qawwali has entered the imagination of the elite class, so that it pervades across the society now. But when something enters the elite homes, the fear is of ‘no-return’. So an average person with an average income cannot go to Jahan-e-Khusrau now.

Everyone in the singing world who wants to be someone must have a qawwali tag these days. So Daler Pa ji came to perform Sufi at the Central Park in CP with huge posters shouting “Daler Sufi”. The park was jampacked, the atmosphere electric, the guest list included Sheila Dikshit. So Daler, in his black shirt and shiny silver overcoat started singing Sadde Naal Rahoge Te Aish Karoge. He realized it wasn’t quite Sufi, and peppered his pop songs with a few lines of Nusrat songs here and there. Na Na Na Re…Ali Da Malang…Sadde Naal…Mast Qalandar. Junta whirled with hisses, flying kisses. Rag tag hiss hass people, Shakespeare would have said. The crowd, however, had variety, with whistle blowers to oglers to foreigners to couples. After a while, after the chief guest had left, the compere announced, “I request families and children to slowly move out of the main area as we are increasing the tempo now. We want you to enjoy.” And Paa ji dropped Sufism for another day so that junta could do their dirty dancing to Na Na Na Na Re.

Sufism, one thought was all inclusive, and one also thought that Daler’s pop-Sufism is a countercultural movement to the elite Jahan-e-Khusrau. But it seems Bulle Shah’s or Amir Khusrau’s poetry cannot quite match Sadde Naal.

Nishabd with Zonko Junkies

I had gone to watch Nishabd with my ‘zonko junkie’ literary friends. The term is self proclaimed, and so I have no explanation for it. One of them remarked over Amitabh Bachchan’s predicament in the film, “Such is life and so much is life.”
“Dude, the man is a picaresque hero. Such random energy in his ageing eyes,” Markandey, popularly called makdi, butted in.
“Where is any picaresque element dude? The hero is not a picaro, he is not a rogue, neither does he go on any adventure to augur such a classification,” Sunil Kumar alias Ass Kay retorted to the idea.
“Now now,” I said mighty confused, “the picture is indeed picturesque with all the valleys and the thunder thighs of Jia Khan, but I see no Picasso anywhere.”
“Fool, Picaro not Picasso,” Makdi mocked at me, “Picaro is a Spanish hero who’s a rogue and goes on all these adventures. And Picaresque is a derivative.”
“Rogue I can’t see, but I could see that the old man had some sort of a rog. As in sickness, you see, falling for this young girl and spoiling it all,” I said.
Ass Kay was in splits, “Man this guy is too much. He is a rogue and he is sick. He is almost Kafkaesque, with his surreal humour and all, that is if he intends it.”
Ass Kay’s addition of a new ‘esque’ had totally stumped me, and Makdi added, “Yeah yeah this dude needs to be metamorphosed into a spider weaving stupid trans-lingual puns, like the hero of Kafka’s Metamorphosis.”
Ass Kay showed off some off his knowledge quoting the first line of that book, “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”
“Ungeziefer is the word for insect in German original by Kafka,” Makdi said not to be left behind, “and you know what, the creator of Lolita, Nabokov, was himself an entomologist.”
While I grappled with the meaning of ‘entomologist’, Makdi said, “Nabokov had researched that Gregor Samsa had got converted to no other insect but a beetle, with wings under his shell, and he could fly if only he had known this fact.”
I figured myself as Gregor Samsa, the beetle, and started looking for wings under my shell to take a long flight far away from the zonko junkies.

Piggy on the Railway

Oil, fish and coal
And a billion whole
Traverse a million miles
On the parallel lines.

If there's a nerve of this country that hasn't cracked as yet, it isthe parallel lines. The parallel lines of Indian Railways, perhaps thecheapest in the world that ferries you at a rupee a kilometer even inAC coaches. The idea of going round Delhi in one and a half hours flatand covering 36 stations is a fascinating idea.

Delhi Avoided Line
The Ring rail service was introduced in the 1970s before the Asiad asa 'Delhi Avoiding Lines', to ferry passengers inside the city anddecongested the four major stations. Thirty years down the line, veryfew people know about it, and the Delhi planning website,delhiplanning.nic.in, tells that the ring rail handles only one percent of the passengers. It's become the avoided line, rather than theavoiding line. Reason? The stations are invisible, it took me half anhour to figure out the Safdarjung railway station. There are noconnecting buses, no landmarks, definitely unsafe at nights. And aboveall, there are only two trains in the morning and two in the evening.So despite amazing speed, and dirt cheap prices, it's not happening.

Ticket babu kahan hai?
We missed the ring rail service courtesy its timings and paucity, butthere was one Nizamuddin bound train waiting. We wanted the tickets,but the ticket collector didn't want us. So he was missing. Apoliceman told us that we are not supposed to click pictures.Safdargunj must be a classified station, for we haven't ever heardthis even at New Delhi. After much hue and cry, the station masterhimself gave us the tickets.The Lonely IslandThe gross underutilization can be gauged from the fact that you canalmost play cricket in the train; it's so empty. The ladies compartment doesn't obviously hold any significance and anyone sitsanywhere. Even at the station you have to hunt for people atSafdarjung. The policemen were packing children – must be for juvenilecrimes – in an auto; they were laying a red carpet for The Palace onWheels and the children were adequately removed before the VIP guestsarrived. Inside the train, the commuters are generally smallbusinessman. So you'll find a fruit seller, a utensil vendor who worksat hundred rupees a day. And Sadhus, sleeping away to glory travelingrandomly in circles. It's almost Romantic, the whole languidity of it.

The Engine Drive
My friend, the photographer, missed climbing on the train eitherbecause of his paunch or his camera, at one of the stations he'd gotdown at. So we wave at an oncoming engine and get a lift. Liaqat Khanis the driver and tells us about his grueling schedule which hasprompted him to study engineering as a part time course. Next year,he'll have a degree to get off the parallel lines. We cross SewaNagar, Lodhi Colony, Nizamuddin and they look very different from whatthey look from outside. The tracks are laid in the body of the city,and not the skin, and the body doesn't appear very healthy. They areplastic bags strewn all over, you cross all jhuggis, and see theinteriors of UP in the heart of Delhi. At the Okhla station we have nooption but to wait an hour for the next train which is an express, andwhich we miss again. In the meanwhile we roam around to see a barber'sshop full of Tere Naam and Himesh Reshammiya, a quack doctor, milkvendors. The milk vendors have a harrowing journey back to Haryanawith train upto only Palwal in the afternoon, after which they have totake tempos. There's variety here, college going girls, bidi smokinguncles, and a girl lying on the floor, with the world oblivious to herbut the flies sensitive to every inch of her body.
Years ago, I had read a very romantic account of the ring rail – thesunset, the trees in the background, the serenity. It's there, butwhat we saw, also exists, and glares.