Four Albums In Search Of An Audience

This article appeared in the May issue of TRAFFIC Life.

So often we find albums that were the rage when they were out, growing stale within a couple of years. Think of James Blunt’s nasal route back to bedlam. Once in a while, we find a popular album standing the test of time; sounding as fresh decades later as it did when it was just released. Revolver still sounds stunning today, 42 years after it was released.

Ever so rarely, we find an album that comes along and gathers dust on music store shelves, until a few years later, when critical opinion catches up with the art.

This story is about four such great albums that didn’t get their dues. It’s about four great albums that had a sense of identity, a great sound, a unique feel, a personal style, yet didn’t quite cut it.

What follows is, at best, a personal appreciation of these albums. At worst, it’s an exercise in cultivated irrelevance. So.


Grand Hotel: Where Fortunes Speed and Dissipate

Better Known For
Their debut Procol Harum; the hit single A Whiter Shade of Pale; and their third album, A Salty Dog.


Procol Harum can be unbearably pretentious, it’s true. (I mean, Christ!, they named their ninth album Procol’s Ninth.) But they can also be wonderfully poignant and melancholic. Their best-selling single A Whiter Shade of Pale, and their eponymous debut album don’t really work for me, with its hotchpotch of classical music and blues-inspired pop. But their seventh album, Grand Hotel, showed a certain unique baroque sensibility that was taking wing.

The album suffers from all the problems that routinely plague Procol Harum – problems other than Keith Reid’s puerile songwriting, for whom there really can be no excuse – namely a lack of direction in terms of the sound, a lack of vision and extreme self-indulgence.

However, where Procol’s Grand Hotel succeeds, is in finding suitable content for their pop-magnified-into-classical-music form. The title track, with its many segments lending the song an eerie atmosphere of pretense and charade, sets the tone for the album. The second track, Toujours L'amour is a guitar vamp-driven song that bounces off its considerably more conservative rock sound against the glitzy decadence of the title track. A Rum Tale builds on the previous track’s themes of love and loss, with a greater use of Procol’s trademark Hammond-organ-and-piano sound.

T.V.Caesar is easily the pick of the album. The humorous yet poignant song, revolving around a mouse who acts mute observer of the protagonist’s lonely life, mostly spent in front of the television (when he is not partying at the Grand, one assumes). Most unusually for Keith Reid, the lyrics do not bluntly bludgeon the unsuspecting listener’s head with the idea, using simple yet eloquent direct speech instead. (T.V. Caesar mighty mouse/ Tops the pops in every house/ Sandwiched in between the ads/Something for the mums and dads/ ‘Great to have you on the show’/ ‘Sorry that you've go to go’/ T.V. Caesar mighty mouse gets the vote in every house)

Souvenir in London too is a fine song, about some contraband material that the narrator has bought as a souvenir in London. The track makes unusual use of the organ’s vamps to build the song’s narrative, instead of trying to create more pompous gravitas.

The good work on the previous three tracks are almost undone by Bringing Home the Bacon, which marks a return to the kind of glorious self-indulgence that gives all progressive rock a bad name. Long repetitive guitar bridges make the song rather intolerable, in spite of the competent lyrics. Although the arrangement is rather unremarkable, the song forms a kind of bridge between the opulence that marked the album until this song and the tales of misery and death that follow. With this track, the sang-froid of the grand soirees described in the first half of the album give way to the misery that lurked beneath. And even a song about jilted love – A Rum Tale – begins to assume greater significance.

Chris Copping’s organ rises up to the occasion beautifully with For Liquorice John. The song, about a man who ‘fell from grace’ and died upon his return from an unnamed city, fits in rather neatly with Souvenir from London. At least, enough to make one wonder if the souvenir was dope that he OD-ed on. For when the protagonist of this song died ‘the doctors didn't hesitate/ what he had they were not sure’.

Fires (Which Burnt Brightly) builds on the theme of misery that informs the second half of the album and elaborates it to the misery of war. If anyone ever wanted evidence of Procol Harum’s utter lack of self-censure, this is it. A slow, stately bass line and an annoying vocal input from Christianne Legrand don’t improve matters at all. For best results, skip track.

The album ends with a song about a man in great pain who asks for a remedy. The inconclusive end to the album works by removing the events of the last track a long way off from the hedonism of the first half of the album.

Well, why did I pick this album?
It may not have the best writing, best arrangements or even the best performances, but Grand Hotel did have character – a distinct character that makes even the worst of Reid’s gems bearable. I mean real gems like: The cord that they knotted to keep us apart/ Could never be broken: it was tied to my heart/ She grew thin and I grew fat/ She left me and that was that.
And that is saying something!


Countdown to Ecstasy: Loss and Longing in a Desolate Land

Better Known For
Aja; Gaucho; for breaking up and producing each other’s solo efforts; for patching up after 20 years and recording the superb Two Against Nature.



Steely Dan has released many fine albums, Aja, Pretzel Logic, Gaucho, Two Against Nature, among others. Can’t Buy a Thrill, their debut release, was widely acclaimed for its jazz-inspired groovy numbers.

Countdown to Ecstasy, a more challenging album, followed Can’t Buy a Thrill. Even at the first listening, it’s obvious why an album such as this would never outsell their easy-listening debut.

But in many ways, Countdown to Ecstasy is significant, for Steely Dan came into its own here. This album has edgier songwriting, giving full wing to Steely Dan’s trademark irony, populating this album with unforgettable dramatic moments. Also Donald Fagen finally came around to the view that he alone could bring out the sense and rhythm of Steely Dan’s extraordinary songwriting.

Dan’s songwriting is often described as suave, sophisticated, worldly-wise, darkly humourous… well, you get the idea. It is all of that, but above all, Dan’s songwriting is dramatic – it attempts to capture dramatic moments. Haitian Divorce, on The Royal Scam, readily leaps to mind. Countdown to Ecstasy too shows the same dramatic genius at work – the narratives written with a sardonic empathy that is uniquely Steely Dan’s.

The album deals with typical Steely Dan obsessions of love, longing, and nostalgia, but all delivered in a flurry of stunning images. Sample the concluding track, King of the World, which describes a lone man’s cry for help in a post-nuclear scenario. No marigolds in the promised land/ There's a hole in the ground/ Where they used to grow/ Any man left on the Rio Grande/ Is the king of the world/ As far as I know. Even while writing about a grim situation such as this, Steely Dan’s irony cannot be under wraps for too long. There's no need to hide/ Taking things the easy way/ If I stay inside/ I might live till Saturday.

In musical terms, this album has a guitar-driven sound, although it isn’t as predominant as in The Royal Scam. Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter is in top form on at least 2 tracks, Boddhisatva and Boston Rag, while Rick Derringer plays a superlative slide guitar solo on Show Biz Kids, one of my favourite Steely Dan numbers.

Boston Rag is one of the best tracks of the album, a narrative poem about nostalgic recollection of a drug trip. The song complements superb songwriting with excellent musicianship. Any news was good news/ And the feeling was bad at home/ I was out of mind and you/ Were on the phone/ Lonnie was the kingpin/ Back in nineteen sixty-five/ I was singing this song/ When Lonnie came alive.

The impotent rage that informs Show Biz Kids is balanced by the playfulness of Rick Derringer’s slide guitar. Becker and Fagen take apologetic cognisance of their growing celebrity and the excesses that come with it – the show biz kids they’re talking about ‘got the Steely Dan t-shirt’.

Pearl of the Quarter is an example of why Steely Dan songs could never work with another singer. Fagen twists around lines with characteristic self-deprecatory humour that makes their songs humane, insightful, and wickedly affectionate. The uncharacteristic pomp in using religious imagery is offset by the self-consciousness of the narrator, making him appear to be a character as humourous in his self-appraisal as Steely Dan is. I walked alone down the miracle mile/ I met my baby by the shrine of the martyr/ She stole my heart with her Cajun smile/ Singing voulez vous/ She loved the million dollar words I say/ She loved the candy and the flowers that I bought her/ She said she loved me and was on her way/ Singing voulez vous.

You may not necessarily agree with Donald Fagen who called Countdown to Ecstasy the best ever Steely Dan album. But you’ve got to concede he’s got a point.


White Light/ White Heat: Split Your Mind Open

Better Known For
The Velvet Underground & Nico; for being Andy Warhol’s protégés; and above all, for being relatively unknown.


It’s almost customary to begin any article on The Velvet Underground with Brian Eno’s homage that although only a few thousands bought VU albums, almost all of them were inspired to form their own bands. Whatever the truth of that, fact remains that VU is not your average rock band. Until their last two albums, they had neither hummable radio-friendly songs nor catchy instrumental arrangements.

Their effervescent debut, The Velvet Underground & Nico, has quite rightly been hailed as a classic. However, it was after having drifted away from Andy Warhol and his Factory in the wake of their debut that VU’s morbid vision came into its own in White Light/ White Heat.

White Light/ White Heat has none of the finesse and structural density of a Venus in Furs, and that is its strength. The album bears the seeds of what would later become punk rock, with tracks such as The Gift and Sister Ray exploding with the raw, almost anarchical, spirit that later imbued punk rock. Most of the tracks on this album have this raw, edgy, jangly feel to it, anticipating, outdoing, later punk bands such as The Sex Pistols.

The relentless experimentation lends the tracks in this album an intensified energy, pitching the events of the songs to a certain hyperrealism, elevating the dysfunctional lives described here to mythic proportions.

White Light/ White Heat also has a certain white sound, and this white wall of sound permeates all the songs on the album. Even on The Gift, a Lou Reed short story narrated by John Cale, is coupled with a raucous edgy rock instrumental in the background. And while the writing is vintage VU – always dark, always disturbing, always demanding and dense, it never reaches the rarefied heights of Venus in Furs.

The jangly, almost-pop-but-not-quite title track is the tightest song of the album; and that sounds almost like a disqualification when the album you’re talking about is White Light/ White Heat. Reed’s droopy singing is an unlikely highpoint of the song – lending a superb feel to a song about an amphetamine trip.

The Gift is one of my favourites from this album; I definitely like it better than Sister Ray. The story starts out innocuously, replete with mundane events showing Marsha’s sexual promiscuity and Waldo’s sexual inadequacy. As the story comes to an unexpectedly grisly end, the rock instrumental reaches ear-splitting levels of disruption, superbly complementing Cale’s calm narration of the macabre incident.

The protagonist in Lady Godiva’s Operation is an unforgettable VU character – a transsexual whose sex-reassignment surgery is botched up by the surgeons. The surgeon ‘cagily’ covers this up by performing a lobotomy on Lady Godiva. The song gains in significance when one realises the barbaric practice of lobotomy was very much in vogue less than 20 years before the song came out. This song is a great example of VU’s uncompromising subversive vision, in both musical form as well as lyrical content.

The achingly beautiful Here She Comes Now is a great counterpoint to the disquiet of the rest of the album. The song, sung in perfect harmony by Reed, displays a certain sense of economy that marks it out with respect to the rest of the album. The song, a hallucination about the narrator’s lover returning, is tempered by the semi-realisation that it isn’t all real Ah oh, it looks so good/ Ah oh, she's made out of wood).

Here She Comes Now assumes greater importance when the manic guitars of I Heard Her Calling My Name take over. The furious riffs in this track have played their part in defining the sound of punk rock. The previous track paints a hopeful picture of life after the lover returns, but the facts prove quite grim. She ‘said she never understood a word from me, because’. The line breaks off without finding any answers. The narrator returns to his dreams, finding no solace in the woman, reassuring himself with: I know that she cares about me/ I heard her call my name/ And I know that she's long dead and gone/Still she ain't the same. Some read the last two lines as indication of necrophilia. Knowing VU, it’s perfectly possible, but I tend to see the ‘long dead and gone’ figuratively, meaning the relationship’s dead. Eventually he concedes ‘his mind split open’ in a haunting ending to a great, and disturbing, song.

Sister Ray, much celebrated for its 17 minute instrumental jam, is a fine example of the poignancy VU can bring to their matter of fact descriptions of dysfunctional lives. The song describes desolate, lonely lives spent in drug-induced excitement, with a long improvisation at the end forming a sort of musical counterpoint to the monotonous lives detailed in the lyrics. The song centres chiefly around themes of sex, violence, masturbation and drug abuse – all described as desolate, lonely activities that alienate the characters further, reducing their sense of reality to an uncertain haze. The shooting of the sailor is described casually, using multiple sexual innuendos, with someone reproaching the killer for ‘staining the carpet’.

While my prosaic paraphrasing of the song makes it seem either like a morality tale on the perils of what has today come to acquire the lazy label of ‘the rock and roll lifestyle’, or a ballad romanticising ‘the rock and roll lifestyle’; the experience of the song is far richer and more complex. It is nothing short of poetry – not so much the lyrics alone, but the song itself – making it a word-and-tone poem of many complex and dark undertones. The long jam at the end has its roots in blues, but the grating tone and loopy structure again point to punk.

This is a great album – one that I hold in the same high regard as Revolver or Abbey Road, Zeppelin IV or Surrealistic Pillow. And perhaps more so than in any of those great albums, White Light/ White Heat fuses words, music, and sound to create truly subversive, transcendental art.


Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus: Mingus Presents Dolphy

Better Known For
Pithecanthropus Erectus; the legendary 1953 Massey Hall concert with Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Max Roach; for his fearsome temper; for anticipating the Third Stream by fusing composition and improvisation


Eric Dolphy’s alto saxophone gets the blues, as much as Lightnin’ Hopkins or Robert Johnson. His saxophone not only plays jazz, it also sounds human, and creates moods that had not been heard on an instrument other than the human voice.

The human wailing inspired improvisation that was uniquely Dolphy’s, drew upon blues shouting as much as on traditional jazz, forging it into a new jazz form that has come to be known as free jazz. While Ornette Coleman played his part in the evolution of free jazz, Dolphy’s contribution in tying in the older jazz forms with the emerging free jazz forms cannot be understated. In a way, Dolphy and Coltrane formed the bridge between the more traditional forms and free jazz, or New Jazz, as it was called then. If Coltrane represented one within the traditional form reaching out, Dolphy was one out there reaching backwards. He was, to use the lingo of the day, the outside-inside man.

While the inside men such as Miles Davis denounced Dolphy’s experiments, Mingus, imperious as ever, declared that ‘these free jazz guys are simply running their fingers over their instruments’ and teamed up with Dolphy to create some truly heady jazz.

Although I tend to rave about Dolphy, this quartet must be one of the strongest in jazz history – Dannie Richmond on drums and Mingus on bass must surely be among the greatest rhythm sections ever. Ted Curson is versatile and energetic and shows a superb ability to add power to Dolphy’s delicate playing.

Dolphy’s work on Folk Forms No. 1 is incredible. Backed by Ted Curson’s muscular trumpet, Dannie’s Richmond’s superb anticipation, and Mingus’ solid bass, Dolphy’s playing makes the opening track at once delicate and powerful, multi-layered, and improvisational. Ted Curson complements Dolphy perfectly, filling in gaps – and Dolphy leaves a lot of those – without obliterating Dolphy’s intricate structures. About 5 minutes into the track, Mingus clearly demonstrates why every jazz bassist must live with being compared with him. His solo is simply superb, accepting sporadic bursts from Dolphy to add colour first and then to slowly build the bass solo into a full-fledged theme for the ensemble. Dannie Richmond too plays a great drum solo, with some very vocal encouragement from Mingus, whose bass line takes over from the drum solo and returns the track to its the melodic centre. The track disintegrates dramatically, with Dolphy’s alto saxophone choking on its sound, and Richmond’s superb syncopation giving it the impression of winding down.

Original Faubus Fables is an instance of traditional call-and-response blues, shouting elevated to a complex jazz form. While this is no doubt impressive, it is Dolphy again who astonishes with his ability to wield the alto saxophone with such fluency as to replicate human wailing without which the blues wouldn’t be the blues. However, I must add that Mingus Sextet’s version at Cornell in 1964 may have an edge over this album version, especially since Mingus and Richmond don’t feel compelled to sing at Cornell, and Jaki Byard on piano is a great addition.

What Love? is a beautiful track, with Dolphy sounding as quiet, economical and lyrical as he did on some of the best tracks of Out There, particularly Serene. Mingus chips in again with another superb solo, mirroring Dolphy’s in its economy and lyricism. An Ellingtonesque ‘exotic’ strain runs through the entire track, showing its full contours only occasionally. Mingus hints at the ‘exotic’ strain in his solo, and this is picked up by Dolphy and given spectacular form.

The outrageously titled, All The Things You Could Be By Now If Sigmund Freud's Wife Was Your Mother, shows some furious playing from Dolphy and Mingus. I have no clear insight as to why this track is called what it is, nor why Mingus chose to dedicate it to all mothers. Well, he was Mingus, and I suppose that'll have to do for the rest of us.


Now What?

I’m sure there'll be many who will disagree with the views expressed here. The idea was never to reach a consensus. After all, between the warm contours of Clifford Brown’s trumpet and Miles Davis’ icy depths, lie worlds waiting to be described.


Cross-posted on Swung Notes.

Judging A Cover By The Album

This article appeared in the July issue of TRAFFIC Life.

Eulogy For A Pop Art Form

I can only imagine it must’ve been like to walk into a record store and see the iconic mural-style design of Pithecanthropus Erectus rubbing shoulders with the extravagant pastiche of Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. I am not old enough to have bought 12-inch vinyl records, but CD covers too do just fine. It’s the now extinct audio cassettes and the upcoming digital music that have no use for cover art design. Here’s my two-bit eulogy for what has always been a rather underrated and undervalued pop art form.

Heady Concoction, That: Bitches Brew

Album Artist: Miles Davis

Cover Artist: Mati Klarwein

Bitches Brew is a dividing line in more ways than one. Look at it one way, and it divides jazz into pre and post categories. For if Bitches Brew had not been made, would jazz fusion even have been acknowledged as an important jazz form? Look at it another way, and it divides Miles Davis fans into pro-Bitches Brew and anti-Bitches Brew categories. And would Miles’ Davis electric phase have been as influential if not for his most popular electric album?

This two-facedness is the central theme of Mati Klarwein’s design for the album cover – with the gatefold cover showing a Janus-like character looking to the past and the future. The sense of occasion is not too far off the mark, for the earliest jazz fusion bands were born here, from Weather Report, to The Mahavishnu Orchestra, from Return to Forever, to Mwandishi Band.

If the bold African motifs reflect the album’s intensified African rhythms, their modern look has the same spin that Miles Davis put on those African rhythms to create the slick modern sound of jazz fusion. The cover is a nod to the blues roots of jazz, with a caveat that this is not more of the same but a new art form forged anew fusing the traditional with the modern. The cover not only captures the lacerating bursts from Miles’ trumpet in the title track, but also the sophisticated modal variations of Joe Zawinul’s Pharoah’s Dance.

Mati Klarwein, the album cover creator, is nothing less than a celebrity in the field of cover art design. Incidentally, the cover for Santana’s Abraxas is a painting by Klarwein called Annunciation. While I’m pretty certain Bitches Brew won’t be remembered best for its album cover, perhaps the cover art deserves more attention – certainly more than Andy Warhol’s self-indulgent album covers.

Raw, Menacing, and Incendiary: Junk Yard

Album Artist: The Birthday Party

Cover Artist: Ed Roth

Nick Cave is the enfant terrible of the post-punk scenario. And The Birthday Party is the band that helped create that raw, bruising style of music that he would create in the years to come. Junk Yard is one of The Birthday Party’s crowning achievements, having created the true menace that The Sex Pistols yearned for, and arguably, failed to achieve. Nick Cave’s menacing baritone, the dark atmosphere of danger created by exceptional bass work from Harvey and Pew, make this an angry, unrelenting masterpiece.

The album’s fury is well demonstrated by Ed Roth’s cover design featuring the hot rod masterpiece Rat Fink. In the heydays of punk rock, Ed Roth’s hot rods (customised cars that had a certain edge to them in terms of design) were championed by the do-it-yourself crowd. Rat Fink, popularised by Ed Roth, became a sort of shorthand for the do-it-yourself ethic of punk rock, a sort of metaphor for the loosely-produced unpolished sound of punk. Junk Yard has none of that loosely-produced sound, yet it sounds raw, as if band members were lacerating each other during the recording.

Rat Fink’s hunting of the cat, a reversal of the typical cat-and-mouse game; the menacing creature that holds aloft a birthday cake, visually punning on the band’s name; the snorting hot rod, externalising the seething anger, and the twisted delight the anger holds for both the creature and Rat Fink, make this cover design as nothing less than spectacular. And no less significant is the congruity between the cover design and the album’s sound.

The album’s sound – dominated by Nick Cave’s menacing baritone and the dark atmosphere of danger created by exceptional bass work from Harvey and Pew – is angry and incendiary. Ed Roth’s cover design manages to recreate that sound, creating a cover design worthy of a great album.

Political Edition: Sometime In New York City

Album Artist: John Lennon/ Yoko Ono with Elephant’s Memory

Cover Artist: Michael Gross

When you think of John Lennon’s solo work, Sometime In New York City is not the first to leap to mind. It isn’t even the second or third.

His most overtly political work, Sometime In New York City, has neither the immediacy of his previous album, Imagine, nor the tonal sophistication of his last authorised album, Double Fantasy. What it does have, however, is a political vision characterised by urgency. The album translates that sense of political urgency into sound, mostly thanks to the exceptional Elephant’s Memory, led by Stan Bronstein whose saxophone and clarinet bring a breathy sharp edge to Lennon’s singing. Elephant’s Memory and Yoko Ono create much of the unique sound of this album – Yoko’s thin steely cold voice smacking of punk, and Stan Bronstein’s sax showing a certain affinity for discordant sounds of Captain Beefheart.

The album cover, designed by Michael Gross, is a simple newspaper layout that contains song lyrics in place of stories. The newspaper layout seems dated now, but at the time, it was quite the in thing. Jethro Tull’s Thick As A Brick, released in the same year, used a similar cover design. Given the album’s uncompromising political stance, with songs ranging from John Sinclair to the Attica State Prison riots, the newspaper layout seems particularly well-chosen. Now whether Lennon and bandmates used the cover design as an inside joke about the mainstream politics of the mass media is an interesting point to speculate.

Clean White Sands, Clean White Sounds: So Far

Album Artist: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

Cover Artist: Joni Mitchell

Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young epitomise so much that is typical of the Southern California scene – the clean bright sound, the political slant that comes with their folk-rock influence, the distinctive harmonies, and the jangle-pop inspired guitar picking.

So Far, a compilation album released in 1974, repackaged material from Crosby, Stills & Nash and Déjà Vu. Containing no new tracks, and no real sense of musical identity (I still love this album though, mostly for nostalgic reasons), the most remarkable thing about this album may be the album cover design by Joni Mitchell.

A felt pen and paper sketch, the cover design works beautifully in that it captures the sunny sounds of CSNY. The half-profiles of the band, showing them picking their guitars – one can almost hear them singing their jangly harmonies – a throwback to the acoustic sound of the old folk musicians. While the incomplete themes and the skewed perspectives wink at psychedelia, the sharp lines, the sunny feel, and the warm colours serve as reminder of the band’s clean sounds that weren’t half as psychedelic as, say, Jefferson Airplane.

The single most important reason why I think it suits the album, is its clean simplicity. Perhaps I can explain what I mean by pointing to the contrasting versions of Wooden Ships by CSNY and Jefferson Airplane. While CSNY’s version makes you think it’s a twisted love story, Jefferson Airplane’s creepy version opens out the possibilities of anti-war anthem that captures a moment in a post-nuclear scenario.

Judging A Cover By The Album

You’re probably wondering if the album covers are really as remarkable as all that. Would we be able to appreciate these album covers the same way if we weren’t familiar with the music? Probably not. But then again, why would you notice an album cover if the music was no good?

Perhaps album covers will die as digital music takes over. Perhaps they will be reborn in another form. Perhaps album covers from 60s and 70s rock and jazz LPs will be recognised as a legitimate pop art form – one best viewed in relation to the music.

Cross-posted on Swung Notes.

ah, let's get it over with

The title refers to the blank blogger page I've been staring at for a few minutes now. A look at my blog tells me the last post is close to a year old.

Time to start all over again, I suppose. This is mostly a test blog, mainly to get myself blogging again.

Some updates:

1. I've started a new blog called Swung Notes: On Three Chords which is mostly going to be about music, film, and maybe even theatre.
   
   
2. This blog will continue to be about my many disgruntled rantings.
   
   
3. Some posts that suit both descriptions will be cross-posted.
   
   
4. The comments section on both blogs is now moderated. This rather cumbersome measure is in light of the highly entertaining flaming I was treated to a year back. It was good while it lasted, thank you, and I was quite glad a la Philip Pullman, to have brought some excitement to what must be very boring lives.
   
   
5. So until I start updating either Swung Notes, or angry fix, hold on.
   

he thinks he thinks

Via Uma, I discovered Shashi Tharoor's latest article with many a pearl of wisdom.

For instance, how he felt, in China and Japan, a perverse pride that we in India had entered the 21st century in clothes that our ancestors had sported for much of the preceding 20.

Glorious!

I continue, then.

The assumption of women having to be alluring is so preadamite that one is too disgusted to even argue. What is disconcerting is the brazen sexism in the whole article, beginning with the moot point of: why can't women dress up as I like seeing them dolled up? to mocking at some arbitrary notion of liberation revolving around wearing a salwar kameez that women supposedly have fostered over the years.

In the article, he posits some manufactured notion of modernity versus tradition, ice-skating precariously on the issue, and making me recall with great affection the nuanced treatment Orhan Pamuk lends the same question in his superb novel, Snow. (Of course, that is not to say Snow was about this question alone.)

Sigh, Shashi!

Cricketers retire, coaches get murdered, actors fade away, politicians get assassinated, the better writers get fatwaed... but fools, they endure. Nothing ever affects them.


Related links: A spirited response from Emma; Nanopolitan's take; Soultrot's argument; Arvind's superb satirical reworking of Shashi Tharoor's article

ends and beginnings at prithvi theatre

Shoestring Theatre's Ends and Beginnings, based on Samuel Beckett's Endgame, has shows at Prithvi Theatre on Tuesday, March 6th and Wednesday, March 7th, 2007.

World,
Please to arrive in hordes!
Also bring the wife along.

Click to enlarge the poster below, courtesy Siddharth, who plays Clov in Ends and Beginnings.



Also check out the Shoestring Theatre blog.

that's the idea, let's abuse each other

From Beckett's Waiting for Godot.

ESTRAGON:
That's the idea, let's abuse each other.

They turn, move apart, turn again and face each other.

VLADIMIR:
Moron!

ESTRAGON:
Vermin!

VLADIMIR:
Abortion!

ESTRAGON:
Morpion!

VLADIMIR:
Sewer-rat!

ESTRAGON:
Curate!

VLADIMIR:
Cretin!

ESTRAGON:
(with finality). Crritic!

VLADIMIR:
Oh!

He wilts, vanquished, and turns away.

In a related development, my review of Writers' Bloc has been generating some heat and dust.

Apart from the comments on my original post, there is a very entertaining discussion comment thread I've been following.

It's been hilarious reading so far, occasionally even flattering.

Comments however, are still welcome.
On this webspace, or the next.

In the absence of intelligent argument, I will settle for entertainment .

Related links: Intersexual bums and other critiques, my Writers' Bloc review

swar thounaojam, author of turel, harassed

Swar Thounaojam is a playwright from Manipur, currently based in Bangalore.

Her excellent play, Turel, was part of Writers' Bloc 2.

The last few days, she has been facing harassment in Bangalore.
She has filed a case and she and her husband, Amit, are fighting the case.

Amit has regular updates on his blog.

On 5th Feb, the Cauvery verdict was announced. A local KMF retailer in my neighbourhood overcharges each time there is a hint of trouble in the city. At 8:30 in the evening, my wife went to buy milk from this chap. As usual he was demanding more money than the MRP. She brought to his notice that overcharging is illegal under the Packaged Commodities Rules (PCR), which state that any trader charging more than the MRP mentioned on the package can be prosecuted. Upon hearing this, he turned extremely abusive and verbally assaulted her. He insulted her, threatened her with physical and sexual harm and physically intimidated her. A crowd gathered but nary a person came to her rescue and to restrain the milkman.

See the original post.


Related links: Amit's blog

writers' bloc 2

Rage’s Writers’ Bloc 2: Fostering an Endangered Species

Rage’s Writers’ Bloc provides new ground for what they themselves call an endangered species – the Indian playwright. It is certainly cause for celebration that such

a forum has opened up for new playwrights, and one may reasonably hope that the quality of playwrighting will improve.

The festival was a very enjoyable theatre experience. From the excellent platform performances, to the installation art inspired by the plays, the festival gave the impression of being efficiently, and tastefully, organised. Among platform performances, Kishore Kadam’s poetry reading effortlessly transcended language and was enjoyable purely for the sense of timing and showmanship he brought to the reading. Faezeh Jalali’s rope malkhamb was another memorable performance, and so was Mumbai-based band Minority Report’s unplugged session.

These are some of my thoughts on the festival during the first fortnight at Prithvi. +

Epilogue: Uncertain Journey Into Other Worlds

The festival opened with Epilogue, written by Maia Katrak and directed by Rajit Kapoor.

Epilogue revolves around the themes of the transformative power of human relationships, and the transcendent human soul. The play opens with the protagonist trying to cheer his family up at his own funeral.

The play details the travails of the dead protagonist as he attempts to change the lives of his family. He is aided in his efforts by two soldiers, also dead, and stranded in the middle of heavenly nowhere by some ingenious metaphysical occasion. (One small question: Why were they soldiers again? Was it a bad intertextual pun because they were stranded in no-man’s land?)

While the basic premise of the story was outlandish, the tepid direction and tame acting let the play down. The visualisation of the play, apart from the few moments with the soldiers, was completely at odds with the script. Perhaps the play would have benefited greatly from a little irreverence.

Also, one got the impression that the otherworldly device was simply one of convenience. What could have been a penetrating device, turned into a charming novelty, never rising beyond mere plot detail. The defamiliarizing device was used neither to shed light on the world as the playwright sees it (as Dostoevsky does with characteristic poignancy in Bobok), nor to satirize it (as Brecht does to hilarious effect in The Good Person of Setzuan when gods who descend to earth). The play seemed to reaffirm the motives, actions and conventions of the world of the play, which in turn were not too far removed from the world outside. The play remained completely familiar, and the otherworldly device remained an uncertain gimmick. In this respect, one could argue the director was faithful to the script by remaining realistic.

The soldiers, played by a superb Neil Bhoopalam and Mukul Chaddha, provided the only respite in the play. The writing in these parts too was extremely funny, and employed some delightful non sequiturs. The set for the soldiers’ scenes, a stylized representation of a diabolical-looking machine, with gears and clockwork, presented interesting possibilities that were largely left unexplored.

On the bright side, the play was genuinely funny in parts, and the actors had the audience eating out of their hands.

Aaltoon Paaltoon: Rites of Passage

If the outlandish Epilogue was acted out with the blandest realism, the realistic Aaltoon Paaltoon benefited greatly from actors who enlivened the stage with some reasonably high-pitched energy levels.

(These thoughts come with the rider that I don’t follow Marathi, but the actors being more than engaging, I could more or less follow the action.)

Aaltoon Paaltoon, written by Irawati Karnik and directed by Adwait Dadarkar, is about two characters who meet at an old-fashioned dresswala’s shop. Niranjan, played by Subodh Khanolkar, lives at the shop, and Rama, played by Leena Bhagwat, takes shelter in the shop on a rainy night.

The tension between the two characters was maintained superbly by the actors, and Subodh Khanolkar delivered one of the better performances of the festival.

A coming of age story, the play revolves around the chance encounter between Niranjan, a rather naïve young man, and Rama, a troubled and forlorn mature woman.

The play, marred by unimaginative direction, succumbed to many unpardonable clichés. The lovemaking scene between the characters was suggested with almost comical reticence. (In spite of my Marathi, I believe this wasn’t so much a textual feature, as it was a director’s interpretation.) Moreover, the play fell apart in the scenes when the action shifted out of the room, and showed a flashback of Rama with her husband. The encounter between Rama and Niranjan may have assumed greater proportions, and remained open to multiple interpretations, had the room been the only setting, and the husband only a figure in Rama’s story.

In spite of the nondescript direction, the play manages to do well, because of the actors, and what looked every bit like a tightly woven script. If the play failed it was only in creating the sense of hazard that every chance encounter implies, the kind of unpredictability and impending disintegration that rites of passage are meant to symbolise.

The play had a memorable opening pre-set, which showed Niranjan gazing at a hairdresser’s model, with a wig for practice. Throughout the play, the model is a safety zone for Niranjan, and he pretends to be busy practising on it. The closing set is similar opening pre-set, except the model doesn’t have a wig anymore, and Niranjan places a topi (which is a symbol for the games Rama and Niranjan play) on it. The closing set becomes a powerful symbol of how the encounter has unalterably changed the lives of Niranjan and Rama.

Dreamcatcher: Dreams of a Dangerous Kind

Vijay Nair’s Dreamcatcher, directed by Faezeh Jalali and Trishla Patel, was typical of the festival, but not only was it deeply ‘personal’, it was entirely devoid of political content, and utterly self-indulgent. One could even go so far as to say that it was even offensive in parts.

Stereotypes abound in the play – from the prudishness of the protagonist, to the sheer vulgarity of the younger sister. While the accents were mercifully not as clichéd as Lolakutty, they were nonetheless all over the place. For a family from Palakkad, they had surprisingly thick Tamil accents, with stilted Malayalam thrown in for good measure. (And it’s perfectly acceptable to expect accuracy from a play that sets out to be realistic.)

The binarized depiction of the sisters’ sexuality was perhaps the most offensive aspect of the play. The younger sister Vanaja Chari was shown to be a free-spirited rebellious angsty type figure, using the most obvious means – vodka in the morning, “I dance for myself, and I don’t care for the purity of your classical art” and all the rest of that. In a scene that managed to be both theatrically embarrassing and politically offensive, the younger sister was shown throwing herself on a waiter she had hardly known a few minutes ago. It isn’t the act of making sexual advances to a waiter one finds distasteful, it is the entirely artless treatment accorded to it. (One couldn’t help but think of Arundhati Roy’s humane handling of an analogous relationship, that of Ammu and Velutha in The God of Small Things. Even making allowances for the vast differences between fiction and drama, the sheer crudeness pervading Dreamcatcher was galling.) The play’s questionable politics came to the fore in showing the sexually empowered as wanton, crass and indiscriminate.

In stark contrast to the younger sister’s wantonness, the protagonist, Padmaja Chari, was depicted as being extremely prudish. In a scene as enraging as the one with the younger sister and the waiter, Padmaja was shown talking to herself in the mirror. Apart from the externalised monologue being one of the oldest (and tiredest) stage devices, the sheer cultural implications were appalling. Padmaja addresses her imaginary lover, looking at herself in the mirror, and sheer lack of humanity that made it possible for the play to laugh at her (for it was comic, and none too ingenious at that) made one wonder if it was the character’s cultural identity that was comical. At least for the audience, the accent was certainly, what made it funny.

The play, for all its attempts to signify to the audience its intellectual gravity and aesthetic formalism, failed to rise above the immediate, the banal and often, the prejudiced. The opulent red drapes, the gilded dressing mirror, the dancing childhood alters of the sisters, the spectacular gobo (as far as lighting goes, that certainly was interesting), all seemed to suggest a self-indulgence that was part of the many attempts to bludgeon the audience into accepting the play’s obvious ‘tastefulness’, and apparent transcendence over the immediate.

At the end of the play, one only had questions:

Was the play a comedy of manners? If so, what was the object of the satire?

Was it a coming of age play? If so, what was the locus of development, the actual event or its retelling? How did the characters evolve, or change?

Was it a play about a delicate inner world set against the turbulent backdrop of riots? If so, how did the riots relate to their ‘inner world’? Or was the turbulent backdrop simply a conveniently transferred epithet, a short hand?

Ultimately, what was the play trying to say, do, or create?

Centre of Gravity and The Edge: From Flippancy to Insignificance

Rajiv Rajendra’s Centre of Gravity was a clever, self-conscious take on the sitcom. A convoluted plot involving 3 pairs of lovers, the play could’ve fallen to the lowest levels of sheer boringness, but for Vikranth Pawar’s upbeat direction, and Zafar Karachiwala’s superbly ironic high-volgate performance.

The play fell flat in parts when it started taking itself seriously, for instance when lovers speak to each other – one to break up an engagement, and the other to stave off a marriage proposal. These scenes were played out with an absolute lack of irony that made one blanch at its banality.

Sohrab Ardeshir, as Newton, is hilarious, and the scenes between Karachiwala and Ardeshir had the audience in splits.

The play fell precisely because it took itself seriously. One suspects the play may have been far more effective had it restricted itself to being solely a satire on the psychobabble-friendship-love-intrigue-more-psychobabble brand of plays.

Manjima Chatterjee’s The Edge, directed by Akarsh Khurana, was perhaps the most disappointing play at Writers’ Bloc. The script was banal, the acting nondescript, the direction unimaginative. This was probably the only play at the festival that did not have the audience on its side, and the unrest in the audience towards the end of the play was barely concealed.

The Excavators: Nihilistic Metaphors

Ajay Krishnan’s The Excavators is an allegorical play built around the central theme of digging. While the play is no doubt clever, it ultimately had no central binding idea, theme, force, or emotional core.

The Excavators starts off with a bare stage with actors creating everything with minimal props. While the play may have failed, the risk it takes with a bare stage, with no real textual development, renders it an honourable failure.

Apart from the self-consciousness that such a minimalist play with a broadly allegorical style may be expected to have, the play was considerably handicapped by its more apparent self-reflexivity, the motif of the play-within-the play. While one didn’t quite know how the rehearsal scenes fitted in with the rest of the play, the constant references to “normal fare”, to “experimental” theatre were very tiresome.

The central idea of the play seems disturbing. The motif of digging seems not an activity to engage with life, but a means of running away from life and its uncertain complexities. Such a shallow nihilistic central idea, when juxtaposed with many of the devices Ajay Krishnan borrows from the repertoire of absurdist theatre, seems to reinforce a common misreading of existentialism in general, and absurdist theatre in particular – that of an unqualified rejection of life.

Turel: The Personal as Political

Swar Thounaojam’s Turel, directed by Sunil Shanbag, was undoubtedly the pick of Writers’ Bloc 2. The play, revolving around the theme of individual liberty, becomes a powerful metaphor for the turbulence in Manipur. Of all the self-absorbed plays revolving around personal issues that comprised Writers’ Bloc, Turel (“River” in Manipuri) was a glowing exception. It was personal, no doubt, and was certainly more concerned with the relationship between Eigya and Luwangcha, and Luwangcha’s identity, than with Manipuri politics, but Sunil Shanbag’s nuanced handling of the play leaves us in no doubt that the personal too was political.

Kumud Mishra as Luwangcha was the standout performance of the festival, and the construction of Luwangcha’s complex identity was perhaps the most telling instance of the play’s all-encompassing humanity.

The poignant relationship between Eigya and Luwangcha – their capacity for love and friendship, the upright Eigya’s companionable tolerance of the vagabond Luwangcha – succeeded in creating a delicate world that one wished would not ever be disturbed. Not that the play is idyllic – the opening scene is one where Eigya’s grandchild is being buried – but the tragedies of the play’s first half allow the characters at least the appearance of being in control of their destinies. There is a brooding sense of loss in the first half; Eigya’s grandchild is dead, Luwangcha’s partner has left him. Yet their lives go on, unhurried as the river on whose banks their world plays itself out.

The sense of brooding loss slowly, imperceptibly, turns into menace. The characters’ fundamental liberties are threatened – like in the brilliant scene when Eigya's son bullies Luwangcha to live like a “normal woman” – and unseen forces start hounding them. A violent soundscape of explosions replaces the unhurried gurgle of the river.

The forces that intrude upon the inner world of the play, are sharply etched in the person of a soldier. The soldier, in the one scene when he appears, kidnaps Luwangcha, and rapes him. The young soldier works himself up to a blind rage when he finds Luwangcha defying a curfew, and believes Luwangcha to be armed. The soldier’s fear, and the inhuman brutalities it leads him to, are superbly depicted in the play.

The play culminates with Eigya’s death in a blast, leaving Luwangcha distraught. Nothing resolved, nothing concluded, yet everything said and done.

In Luwangcha’s unconventional identity, Eigya’s acceptance of him, and its brutal violation by external forces, Swar Thounaojam has created a powerful metaphor for the political dilemma of Manipur. Yet, at the end of Turel, what one remembered was not the metaphorical, but the immediate.

+ I missed Crab, The President is Coming, and Poornaviram, and although I watched the Marathi play Mazha Vatanicha Khara-Khura, I could not follow the action. Naturally, this review excludes those plays.

writers' bloc: epilogue and aaltoon paltoon

These are some random thoughts about the first two plays at Rage's Writers' Bloc-2. My review of the plays at Rage's Writers' Bloc-2 should appear in the March issue of Prithvi Theatre Notes.


Day 1: Maia Katrak's Epilogue
Director: Rajit Kapoor
9th Jan, 2007, Prithvi Theatre

The first play that flagged off the festival was Maia Katrak's Epilogue.

The play was about this dead man who wants to stand by his family in their trials. The family happens to be a Parsi family, and by an equally improbable happenstance, the old man happens to be Sohrab Ardeshir. In his efforts, he is aided by 2 soldiers, also dead, who're stranded (by some ingenious metaphysical occasion) in the middle of heavenly nowhere.

While the basic premise of the play was intended to be outlandish, the acting and the direction proved to be tame and at odds with the writing. Also one suspected, Maia Katrak's intention in using this other-worldly device was not exactly to shed light on the one we know, (as Dostoevsky does with his brilliant, and hilarious, short story Bobok, where dead people talk to each other while the protagonist listens to them) and neither was it to satirise it (as Brecht does in the opening scene of The Good Person of Setchuan where three gods descend to Setchuan). The impression that one got at the end of the play was that the attempt was only to reaffirm the motives, actions and conventions of the world of the play, which i turn were rather close to the familiar world outside.

While I expected some irony, structural or textual, in a play with such a delightfully audacious premise, the play left me cold by cheerfully, and coldly, charging through "the story". What could've been a penetrating device, turned into a merely charming novelty

On the bright side, the play was genuinely funny in parts, and the actors had the audience eating out of their hands, mostly by virtue of lines easy to speak and easier to laugh at. Neil Bhoopalam and Mukul Chadda excelled as the stranded dead soldiers, particularly Neil Bhoopalam. (One small question: why were they soldiers again? Was it a bad textual pun because they were stranded in no-man's land?)

Expectedly, Sohrab Ardeshir was funny.

The play was preceded by a superb platform performance, an unplugged session by Mumbai-based band Minority Report where they played mostly original music. Very enjoyable.


Day 2: Irawati Karnik's Aaltoon Paltoon
Director: Adwait Karnik
10th Jan, 2007, Prithvi Theatre

If the outlandish Epilogue was acted out with the blandest realism, the utterly realistic Aaltoon Paaltoon benefited greatly from actors who pushed the limits of action, within the limitations imposed by the play.

I can't say I followed the whole play, thanks to my non-existent Marathi, but the actors were more than engaging.

The play was about 2 characters who meet at an old-fashioned dresswala's shop. Niranjan (played by Subodh Khanolkar) lives at the shop, and Rama (Leena Bhagwat) takes shelter on a rainy night.

The tension between the two characters was maintained superbly by the actors, and Subodh Khanolkar as Niranjan was superlative.

The play was marred by unimaginative direction, which turned what could've been an almost surrealistic encounter into a mere meeting. The latent violence that could've been tapped into a situation such as the play's was completely missing. Perhaps this was a textual, but I wouldn't really know, guessing as I was at the dialogue. The action shifts out of the room a couple of times, to show Rama with her husband, and this completely mars the play. The encounter between the Niranjan and Rama may have worked much better, and been open to greater interpretations, if the room had been the only setting, and husband been a figure in Rama's story.

The play succumbed to unpardonable cliches, such as in the lovemaking scene.

But in spite of the unimaginative direction, the play still manages to do well, mostly because of the actors. One image that stuck in my mind is the pre-set, which has a sharp profile spot on a hairdresser's model, with a wig for practice. The closing set in the play is similar, except the bust doesn't have a wig, and Niranjan places the topi (which is a symbol for the games Rama and Niranjan play) on the model. The closing set becomes a powerful symbol of how the encounter unalterably changes the lives of the characters.

The light execution deserves special mention.
Very rarely is a play drastically affected by the lighting. It occasionally happens when the light design and execution are superlative, but mostly when the light execution is so bad that it calls attention to itself. The light execution for Aaltoon Paltoon was an example of the latter. The light intensity varied for no obvious reason in the middle of action, not once but many times over. The transitions were all jerky, and terribly uncomfortable to watch.


PS: If you find any other reviews on the web, please drop me a line.


Related links: Schedule on Mumbai Theatre Guide, Rage's Writers' Bloc-2 feedback blog


Category: theatre, mumbai

what the papers had to say

These are links to media articles about Ends and Beginnings.

Pragya Tiwari had an excellent review in the Mumbai Mirror, which is not online. I will scan and post in online one of these days.

UPDATE: I've added Pragya Tiwari's review at the end of this post. Scroll down to see the review.


The Mumbai Theatre Guide's list of Thespo 8 winners
Lists winners in all categories, with short bios.


The Mid-Day theatre review, which referred to Ends and Beginnings
A flattering mention.

An excerpt:

As expected Ends and Beginnings (based on Samuel Beckett’s Endgame) directed by Vivek Narayan, swept the Thespo 8 awards nite in the city over the weekend.

This annual youth theatre festival of Mumbai’s Q Theatre Productions had Beckett’s comedy about the absurdity of modern life, a clear-cut winner. It bagged awards for its actors — Niharika Negi, Siddharth Kumar and Warren D’Sylva — besides the best director and best play honours.

Nadir Khan's perceptive comments on Ends and Beginnings
Something to think about, most definitely.


The Mumbai Theatre Guide review, which paid a lot of attention to Ends and Beginnings
A scathing review.

A choice excerpt:

The last play of the festival bagged almost all the awards. ENDS & BEGINNINGS based on Samuel Beckett’s ENDGAME won awards for the Best Supporting Male and Female actors, for Best Actor, Best Direction, Best Production Design and for the Best Play too. So was it really that great? While the play itself can verily classify itself as literature of the highest quality, the production directed by Vivek Narayan was just about ok. Stretch the definition of ok and you could end up with platitudes like nice and good.

Here's the complete review by Pragya Tiwari, received by mail.

Samuel Beckett’s Endgame (directed by Vivek Narayan as Ends And Beginnings) was the concluding play at Thespo 8 and swept all the awards in a pop cultural awards night that followed. Nearly 50 years ago when the play had opened at the Royal Court Theatre in London it had been panned by the majority of critics for its drastic defiance of the mainstream. Ironies such as these, mundane and bittersweet, inspired this master playwright to fashion plays that have stood the test of time and are yet not past their prime.

Beckett recreates the ordinary world in the most extraordinary way. In a bare interior four people, Hamm, his parents Nell and Nagg and his servant Clov, live out their lives. With the exception of Nell who is beyond caring, everyone is waiting for something but besides Nell’s apparent death two-thirds way through, nothing happens in the play. The structure is as different as can be from the mainstream well-made plays and so tenuous it could fall apart if not for the consistency in dialogue and characterization. The dialogue is representative of pointless everyday conversations but suffused with Beckett-ian wit and humor. It is marked with twisted clichés like “if age but knew”, literary allusions to Shakespeare and Descartes and when the script demands it rises from coarseness to great beauty. The characters are consistent with the static and potentially explosive nature of the play. Each one is hopeless and crippled. Each one dislikes the other. The bare interior with its dustbins and dust sheets is barely warding off the decay outside. The audience like Hamm who is blind has to rely on Clov’s descriptions of what lies outside. This has a claustrophobic effect essential for the play’s impact.

It may be difficult to describe the play’s structure but it is impossible to paraphrase its meaning. Hamm can be a decrepit king, the last survivor of a nuclear war dying of radiation or an ordinary man arrogant and frail, cruel and tender who bemoans that life is a pointless farce and fears what lies beyond. Beckett’s plays do not exhaust their meaning by making succinct points. They may not reveal distinct symbols which open into airy zones of clear and comforting thesis but are symbols in themselves- ambiguous and poetic. Endgame is a symbol of the theatre. It mocks the audience, contemplates its structure and meaning and constantly refers to itself. It is also the symbol of an ill-fated one sided game between a man and his stars. It is the symbol of the end which marks every beginning. It distills the painful experiences of the years of war and the cold war in which Beckett conceived and wrote his plays. But dark and cruel as they appear on first acquaintance, their inherent humanity surfaces slowly but surely.

The production was crisp, lucid and faithful to Beckett’s instructions and design. The stage may not have been bathed with “grey light” and the picture with its face to the wall may have been missing, but the essence of dilapidation, imprisonment and a last weathering refuge were recreated successfully. Warren D’ Sylva as Hamm managed a consistency in his characterization. He internalized the impending doom of the character well but lacked the kind of flourish that made Hamm Richard-esque and kingly. Sidhdharth Kumar as Clov had good timing but not enough range. It was evident that the cast and crew had made sincere efforts to explore the text and its context thoroughly but it was also evident that every award they won was for Beckett.

two planks, a passion and…?

Shoestring Theatre's production of Ends and Beginnings had a good show at Thespo 8, Mumbai. We always thought it was funny play, and, for once, the audience agreed.

The sleepwalking that invariably gets me immediately after a show hasn't yet gone away, but once it does, I'll probably put up my thoughts on the show.

At Thespo, we won Best Play, Best Production Design, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress. (The Shoestring Theatre blog lists winners.)

We got a surprisingly insightful review in Mumbai Mirror dated December 19th, 2006. The review was written by Pragya Tiwari. (No link yet, but it's on page 42 under the ETC section.)

An article written by me was printed in the DNA on Saturday, the 16th. The editor kept the set-up lines, and chopped the punchlines in the version that appeared in the DNA. Beautiful! However, I'll forgive her because she introduced me as Vivek Narayan, just 23, writes...
For someone who's worrying about growing old, it's quite agreeable to be introduced as Vivek Narayan, just 23.

Here's the DNA article.

This is my unedited draft of the article.

Two planks, a passion and…?

When I first read Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, it produced a rather profound visceral reaction in me. It was, in precise terms, ‘huhn?’.

I went back to the play later, mostly because a rather grave actor, who was a rather grave professor of literature by day, assured me that the play was about old age!

A couple of re-readings, and I could understand, and worse, even relate to, some parts in the play. The moment of damnation came when I started laughing at the play, and that was when I realized I wanted to stage Endgame.

Having found a text was a start, but only that. I needed a team. Warren D’Sylva, one of the founding members of Shoestring Theatre, came on board soon after. The rest of the team trickled in one by one, and finally, we had a cast and a production team.

In hindsight, our rehearsal process seems to have been one of elimination. We ran through a few designs – one highlighting the chess motif, another bringing out the claustrophobia – all lacked conviction. The only constant (mercifully, there was one) was the element of comedy. We were positive we had a very funny play on our hands. The problem was to get the audience to agree.

Rehearsals were mostly fun, except when we actually worked on the play. The fact that we were all excited young people, brought with it chronic self-indulgence, but also an air of active peer collaboration that allowed us to question everything. Nothing was sacred, not even Beckett. We made changes with gusto, chopped, edited and added, and the play transformed into Ends and Beginnings, a title we thought would focus better on the lives of the characters in the play. We were infinitely more interested in the present lives of the characters than their past. This shift in focus also brought into focus the element of play acting, which became another area of interest.

When we thought the play was more or less ready, we started looking for staging venues. And that was when Thespo happened.

Once we were selected, we had mentoring workshops with theatre professionals like Ramu Ramanathan, Arghya Lahiri and Jehan Maneckshaw. In Ramu and Arghya, we had found two extremely sympathetic critic-mentors, and even more delightfully, fellow Beckett lovers. Jehan came in later and helped us focus better on the craft of our production.

I must admit to having gone into the whole mentoring process with a lot of scepticism and apprehension, but I came out of it convinced of, and touched by, Thespo’s faith in our creative vision. This sensitivity to young creative minds, and the commitment it implies, must surely be one of the most significant elements in Thespo’s contributions to youth theatre in India.

True, one only needs two planks and a passion to make great theatre. But a sensitive festival organizer doesn’t hurt.

Crossposted on Shoestring Theatre blog.

Categories: theatre, personal, mumbai

there will be a show tonight on trampoline

The long hiatus from blogging has been mostly because I've been rehearsing for Shoestring Theatre's production of Samuel Beckett's Endgame.

I had written about it on my theatre group's blog when we started out (god, when was that?), and although nearly all the staging ideas discussed in that post were eventually discarded, the play mercifully remained the same. (Also the director.)

Then came the issue of copyright violations, so it's now Ends and Beginnings, based on Samuel Beckett's Endgame.

That's the story so far.

Finally, after months of weekend rehearsals, that brought us much sympathy from colleagues on Monday mornings, the play is ready to be staged. And having been some days in preparation, a splendid time is guaranteed for all.

We premiere this Saturday, 2nd December 2006, at Ranga Shankara, Bangalore as part of Thespo 8.

The play comes to Mumbai on Sunday the 17th of December, 2006, at the NCPA Experimental, again as part of Thespo 8.

We are trying to work out other shows, and these will most probably be in January.


Crossposted on the Shoestring Theatre blog.


Aside: Once the play is over, I need to get back to the Outside World, and see what Tavleen Singh and others of her ilk have been up to!)


Categories: theatre, personal, mumbai

making progress on practical opinions

Paris Hilton, intellectuals, horses and mollusks
Have but one thing in common: Sex.
But not all of them talk about it.

The Intellectual appeared on national television advising women on
The Only Practical Thing to Do: Fake It.
Fake it, she said, with a matching smile.

In a related incident, young 36-28-36s started having
Weekly meetings in Surinam , Fiji , Oregon and Vishakhapatnam to
Get It Right. Dogs in the neighbourhoods scurried.

When quizzed on her former views, nearly three decades old,
And quite out of synch with this New Practical Opinion,
She shook her head and said,
“But that’s not what I meant at all. That is not it, at all.”

Within a fortnight, the 36-28-36s were already getting it righter.
One more coloured ribbon successfully added to the
Gift-wrapped, New Improved Themselves.
The dogs were most upset.

In a moment of lucidity, I knew where the werewolf legend came from.
Perhaps some medieval Intellectual had advised young women
With The Only Practical Thing To Do.

Within a month, the medieval myth of werewolves appearing
Only on full moon nights had been firmly dispelled.
They now roamed quite freely on all nights.
And they were more practical. Empowered even, I’d heard.
Not for them the baseless medieval legends,
The world was making fast progress, you know.

Ah Progress! It is a wonderful thing!
Only the horses and the mollusks don’t talk about it.


Categories: humour, personal, pointless

reality and its liberal bias

We're not members of the factinista. We go straight from the gut, right? That's where the truth lies, right down here in the gut.

Steven Colbert, at the White House Correspondents Dinner

I am quite positive Colbert didn't have Tavleen Singh in mind when he said that, but he might as well have.

In her Sunday Express column, dated August 27, 2006, Tavleen Singh denounced India's outrage at the detention of 12 Indians in Amsterdam, as symptomatic of 'our denial about the transformation of ordinary, supposedly moderate Indian Muslims' and found it odd that 'instead of being upset that Indian garment exporters should have disobeyed flight attendants, the media spoke almost in one voice to condemn "racial profiling"'.

She further said that the media went out of its way to show they were ordinary businessmen. (How could they be? They were *gasp* Muslims.)

"Nek, namazi" were the words used. Alas, so is Osama bin Laden. He fights us infidels only because he believes that Allah has sent him to Earth to either turn us into believers or finish us off.

She is horrified that these Muslims are even allowed to breed.

European countries have allowed Muslim immigration in such large numbers that, according to some estimates, in a few years every fifth or sixth person in Western Europe will be Muslim. It is hard to find a European city that does not have several mosques.

Most mindnumbingly, she rationalises that since terrorists have tried to use iPods and mobile phones as detonators in the past, arresting anyone found using a phone or an iPod is quite reasonable. (And if the were Muslim, well, they had it coming anyway.)

And, what were they going to use? Liquid explosives and mobile phones and iPods as detonators. Is it surprising that airline marshals on the Northwest flight to Mumbai should have panicked when they saw a group of Muslims refusing to turn off their mobile phones?

There you have it: the latest weapon of mass destruction.
The iDetonator.

I hereby unequivocally declare that Roswitha should be arrested for her 20GB iDetonator, and that Kausha must be hanged to death, preferably without trial, for having a 30GB video iDetonator. The Dunce may be let off with a fine: he only has an iDetonator Shuffle, which is ineffective as it blows up unexpected targets. (Delhi for Amsterdam, Melbourne for Kyoto etc. The Shuffle takes some getting used to, you know.)

While most people would find it hard to stomach Tavleen Singh's views, there are indeed many takers for milder versions of the "Islam = Terrorism" logic. Talking about regional economics, political tensions and oppression usually elicits smirks.

'Islamic Terrorism', simply 'Islam' for short, is the new catchphrase.

Tavleen Singh and party are right on one count: terrorism is a pressing subject of our times.

Which brings me to Robert Pape, one of the foremost experts on contemporary terrorism.


In an article published in the Truthout *, Pape has some telling facts. I quote:

• There had never been a documented suicide attack in Iraq until after the American invasion in 2003.
  
  
• Before Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982, there was no Hezbollah suicide terrorist campaign against Israel; indeed, Hezbollah came into existence only after this event.
  
  
• Before the Sri Lankan military began moving into the Tamil homelands of the island in 1987, the Tamil Tigers did not use suicide attacks.
  
  
• Before the huge increase in Jewish settlers on the West Bank in the 1980's, Palestinian groups did not use suicide terrorism.

Read the entire article here.


In another article, published in The Guardian +, he discusses the Hezbollah resistance against the Israeli occupation. He says that of the 41 suicide bombers, only eight were Islamic fundamentalists; 27 were from leftist political groups such as the Lebanese Communist Party and the Arab Socialist Union; three were Christians, including a female secondary school teacher with a college degree. Significantly, all were born in Lebanon. (Data for 3 bombers not found.)

He says that what the bombers shared was not a religious or political ideology but simply a commitment to resisting a foreign occupation.

He concludes:

Religion is rarely the root cause, although it is often used as a tool by terrorist organisations in recruiting and in other efforts in service of the broader strategic objective. Most often, it is a response to foreign occupation.

Read the entire article here.


In this interview with Kerry O'Brien, Pape says:

There are 1.6 million Muslims in Britain. The Home Office found that 13 per cent of those Muslims believed that suicide attacks against the West were justified. They further found that the central reason for why those 13 per cent believed those suicide attacks were justified was anger over British military policies on the Arabian Peninsula. The link between anger over American, British and Western military forces stationed on the Arabian Peninsula and Al Qaeda's ability to recruit suicide terrorists to kill us couldn't be tighter.

While people such as Tavleen Singh continue to hate the entire Muslim community, and come up with baseless arguments to support their essential bigotry, Robert Pape has uncovered vital information that is critical to understanding how prejudiced the blanket accusations against 'Islamic Terrorism' are.


But Tavleen Singh would be highly suspicious of this new evidence. I wouldn't blame her. After all, reality does have a liberal bias.


* The Robert Pape article, Blowing up an Assumption, was originally published in the New York Times. The article requires free subscription.

+ What we still don't understand about the Hizbollah, was later republished in The Hindu.


Related links:

1. Exploding Myths, an article by Oliver King, where he discusses Pape's seminal work, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism.
   


2. Adam Wolfson's discussion here.
   
   
3. A PDF version of Pape's essay published in the American Political Science Review, The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism. (via Daniel Drezner)
   
   
4. A suicide bomber killed at least 17 people on Monday, the 28th of August, in Afghanistan. Although Pape supports the invasion of Afghanistan, he would no doubt see the perceived foreign invasion as the primary reason.
   
   
5. In a more complex form of rebellion, women are turning to the Qur'an in Syria, forming secret groups such as the Qubaisiate.
   

   “People mistake tradition for religion,” Ms. Kaldi said. “Men are always saying, ‘Women can’t do that because of religion,’ when in fact it is only tradition. It’s important for us to study so that we will know the difference.”

   Although it's about time women asserted their independence in the more oppressive Islamic societies, I wonder if turning to religion is the answer. It could so easily turn out to a hollow victory like the Islamic Revolution in Iran.
   
   
6. Another article by Pape in The Palenstine Chronicle.
   
   
7. A report in The Australian about why Robert Pape is persona non grata in Australia.
   

The Chicago academic and author argues that Australia is on the radar of terror groups primarily because of its actions and behaviour, not because of what it represents. It is a theory unpopular with the Government, which says Australia is a terror target because it is a secular Western democracy, not because of its foreign policy.




8. Closer home, an editorial in The Hindu which compares Manmohan Singh's recent comments with Vajpayee's infamous comments in the aftermath of the 2002 pogrom in Gujarat.
   

Categories: terrorism, ideology, politics, world, india, USA, west.asia, war

a little quiz

Simple enough: Identify the painter.
(Hint: It's not who you think it is.)


Categories: images, pointless

divine wrath as an excuse for human folly

The entry of women into Sabarimala is a controversy that's been raging for a while now, especially since the Kerala government has gone into overdrive with contradicting statements.

The story so far
The Sabarimala story begins with a couple of South Indian actors who confessed recently to entering the temple. Ironically, one of them has been undergoing penance ever since, apparently to atone for the misdeed.

Following the revelation by the actors, a group of lawyers filed a PIL in the Supreme Court challenging the ban on the entry of women into the temple. G. Sudhakaran, the Minister for Cooperatives and Devasoms, got into the act and initially said that the Achutanandan government wanted to preserve 'tradition'. Soon after, within hours of the Supreme Court issuing a notice to the Kerala government, Sudhakaran did a volte-face and said the Government was not opposed to allowing women to the temple. V.S. Achuthanandan, the Chief Minister, put in his two-bit by promptly disowning Sudhakaran's views on women entering the Sabarimala shrine as his (Sudhakaran's) own opinion.

Characteristically, the tantris have been huffing and puffing that tradition must be maintained.


And the story continues
While the matter is currently sub-judice, all major public (and not so public) figures in Kerala, have played camoes in the still unfolding tamasha.

Anita Nair, the author, recently made a statement saying she would NOT like any changes to the present customs. She asks here:

Can women undertake the rigorous penance (41 days) associated with the Sabarimala trek?

And assures us here that:

They would find it difficult and my opinion is that let the customs and traditions of Sabarimala continue as it is now.

I am not sure what hardships she meant. If it is the long trek, let me assure you that today it isn't much more than a walk up a flight of stairs. Most pilgrims today don't take the arduous Veliya Paatha, or the Long Path, which is a long trek over the seven hills that surround Sabarimala (see picture). Not once in my 11 trips to Sabarimala did I walk the entire 18 kilometers. The trek uphill from Pamba is a mere 4 kms, and is along a completely concretised path. And if it the 41-day vrata she meant, that is a ritual followed only by the most committed pilgrims.

The most offensive perhaps, is the assumption that women are inherently weaker and therefore cannot undertake the journey. It is an argument my mother, a practising Hindu, uses when asked about Sabarimala. They will find it difficult. They are impure. Tradition must be respected. Why this temple? Let them go elsewhere.

There is no hope of arguing successfully against that kind of dogma.

The very same arguments were once used to keep Dalits out of temples until the Vaikom Satyagraham changed all that. It is ironic that the present Government, played a pivotal role in that movement for equal rights more than eight decades ago.


Tradition has always tended towards being a regressive, normalising force. If tradition is a recorded form (oral or otherwise) of a living, breathing, evolving culture. The understanding of the culture of yesteryear is invariably coloured by the dogmas of our own generation. And it is in this sense that the Government, and others like Anita Nair, would be setting us back by centuries in opposing the entry of women into Sabarimala.

It is time the government acted firmly and decisively, and tooka clear stand on the issue. The ban must be withdrawn. Unequivocally.


'The Lord is not happy'
The charged political atmosphere and the shape-shifting vote banks in Kerala may prevent a quick resolution to this issue. The Shiv Sena has been attempting to make inroads into Kerala for a while now, and is sure to pounce on any attempt at reform. There is no immediate serious risk from them for now though. (Are they even important in Mumbai anymore?)

The threat lies in an alliance between the NSS and the VHP. The NSS is a significant player in Kerala politics. Traditional Karunakaran supporters, they are not quite in the fire and brimstone VHP mould. At least, not yet. This is what Kummanam Rajashekharan, State Organising Secretary of VHP, and State President of Hindu Aikya Vedi has to say in the BJP mouthpiece The Organiser.

The nimithams (omens) were also positive since a woman entered the devaprashnam hall when he was speaking of a woman’s entry into Sreekovil. Similarly, when he spoke of fight for money, three fighting cats entered the hall and started fighting and crying. The ‘DP’ suggested free annadanam for all pilgrims and bringing of Vavur mosque (Ayyappa’s friend) under the control of Sabarimala temple since non-temple activities and fleecing of devotees are going on at Vavur mosque. The total summary of the ‘DP’ is that due to the arrival of crores of devotees, hundreds of crores of rupees are being pumped into Sabarimala, which is not being used for welfare of pilgrims but being swindled by the money mafia. The net result is that the Lord is not happy with the conduct in Sabarimala.
...
About 75 per cent of the hotels in Sabarimala and most of the hotels in Ranni, Erumeli and Karimala route are being run by Muslims or Christians who are the main financiers of politicians and Devaswom authorities. If as per ‘DP’ annadanam is provided, they stand to lose crores of rupees. I suspect the hand of the Christian-Muslim lobby in the attempts to belittle the ‘DP’ and destroy Sabarimala, its culture and traditions.

['DP' stands for devaprasnam, which is a form of divination that concerns temples, and modes of worship. Emphasis added throughout.]

Read the entire interview here.

Come to think of it, I am surprised he did not argue that the Chief Priest's alleged involvement in a sex scandal was the result of divine wrath. Maybe he is saving it for the next issue of The Organiser.


Endnote
Sabarimala is one often held up as a beacon of communal harmony. While that may be overstating the case, especially with Hindu Aikya Vedi and others playing a role of late, Sabarimala is remarkably representative in its myths of origin. Read about it here and here.


Categories: politics, ideology, myth, india, personal, rights

disgusting

This report about Indian TV crews aiding an immolation attempt can only be termed disgusting.

"We have seized footage clearly showing a group of journalists handing over matches and some inflammable substance -- which we later verified to be diesel -- to the victim," acting Gaya police chief P.K. Sinha told Reuters by telephone.

"We have prepared charges for abetment against the journalists. There were five to six of them who were conspirators in this suicide attempt which is a criminal offence," Sinha said, adding that arrests were expected shortly.

The TV crews left the scene without aiding Mishra who suffered burns to over 70 percent of his body, Sinha said.

(Link via India Uncut)

Words fail me.


Categories: MSM, india, personal

the musafir

Kenneth Tynan once famously said, "I doubt if I could love anyone who did not wish to see Look Back in Anger."

The poor sod. He found only masochistic, slightly disturbed women all his life.

On that note, let me declare, ... clears throat...
"I doubt if I could love anyone who did not love Kishore Kumar."

Well, there it is.

I am not a great fan of film music, particularly of Hindi film music. But this man is an exception. I once stood in the rain and listened to chingari koi bhadke. But then I had an umbrella and a windcheater. As Ros put it, that bit of detail just destroys my melancholy cred. What to do?

Have a nice weekend. Until Monday, then. Oh, and download some great Kishore Kumar songs here.

Musafir hoon yaaron... na ghar hai na tikhana...


Categories: personal, pointless

eleutheria

Or

Of Shirin Ebadi, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and individual liberties


This post focuses on some points I raised in my previous post, where I wrote about semantic binaries that pigeon-hole and neuter any attempt at change or reform. Here I would like to add to, and expand upon, a couple of points I made in the previous post.

The confusion created by ideologies that enable change was my central point. I used the examples of Chirac's oppresive measures in France and Ataturk's excesses in Turkey. I left out Iran.

The US and UK funded Reza Shah regime was overthrown by the Islamic Revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini. Many liberals, at the time, including Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi, supported the fundamentalist Islamic Revolution against the secular Shah.

The idea, as Shirin Ebadi says here, was Liberty.

The slogans then were Freedom and Democracy and Independence.Unfortunately, we were not able to implement those slogans, but I am still interested in trying to make them a reality.

She also makes the point here that Ahmadinejad was favoured by 14 million out of a voting population of 49 million.

We have a population of 70 million. Forty-nine million can vote. Mr. Khatami was elected with 22 million votes. Mr. Ahmadinejad, during the second round of the elections, when all the other competitors had been eliminated, got 14 million votes.

She however, rightly points out that USA's involvement in Iran will only worsen things, and that democracy should, and will, emerge from within. She also has an interesting take on Bush.

People are very critical toward the government, but I think that if there is an attack against Iran, people will forget about their criticism, and they will rally with the government. Any attack on Iran will be good for the government and will actually damage the democratic movement in Iran.
...
Once in a while I have the impression that what Mr. Bush says is very much like what Mr. Ahmadinejad says. For example, when Mr. Bush says he has a mission from God to settle the problems in the Middle East. Mr. Bush sometimes wants to bring democracy through the use of force, like the government of Iran wants to push people by force into paradise.

Read the entire interview here. Another excellent interview here.


The other point I wanted to raise was about this man.


In an interview published in The Hindu, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad talks about 'peace and tranquility and justice', in words that would make a liberal proud. (I know that sounds ironic. It isn't meant to.)

We think that the time of weapons of mass destruction having a say in, or determining the course of, political or human relations is in the past. It is finished. And in the very near future, these existing arsenals are going to become useless. All nations very much abhor war, killing, and bloodshed. There are only a few big powers that want to speed up the arms race, and of course, the reason they are interested in this is to line their own pockets. Today, the age of thinking, of cultural exchanges and endeavours has dawned. What we desperately need is better human interaction, peace, justice, pens — people in the media, for example — that work for the greater good. These are the factors that contribute to or bring about happiness and well-being. Bombs do not provide prosperity. The money that is spent on armaments should rightfully be spent on better welfare, for the development of our various societies, and also healthcare.

Only time will tell whether these are hollow words, but the immediate step must be to hold talks with Iran. I firmly believe that his statements against the Holocaust, and incendiary speeches against the US were but rhetorical statements aimed at catching the US on the Iraqi backfoot. And he's succeeded. The US set back relations with Iran, and by extension, a possible truce in West Asia, when they declined his offer to negotiate.

I am hoping his offer will eventually be taken up. And that Lebanon's Hezbollah-backed offer of policing the disputed territory in south Lebanon, will be taken seriously and NOT dismissed patronisingly as an interesting offer.


Related articles:
In The Hindu: Ahmadinejad keen on energy ties with India
Mike Wallace talks about his interview of Ahmadinejad here, here and here.


A note on the title:
The title is a reference to the Greek Resistance revolutionary in John Fowles' masterpiece The Magus. After hours of torture, when his gag is removed, he screams 'eleutheria!' in defiance. Fowles was alluding to the 19th century Greek cry of Liberty or Death.

The French Revolution happened nearly 200 years ago, and may be a distant historical event for us, but its lessons (that eventually you get robespierred) must not be forgotten. In the quest for change, or reform, individual liberties must be paramount, and supercede all else. Even the objectives of the reforms/ revolution itself. Basically, Gandhi NOT Bose.

Amidst modernising monarchies, fundamentalist theocracies, revolutionary radicalism and betrayed democracies, individual liberties are often trampled upon, and one form of oppression replaced with another.


Categories: world, west.asia, USA, politics, war, rights

war and peace

Or

The Futile War of the Binaries

Does a thirty-year-old woman need a homeland where she might make a life?
Can I reach the summit of this rugged mountain? The slope is either an abyss
or a place of siege.
Midway it divides. It's a journey. Martyrs kill one another.

Mahmoud Darwish, Neighing at the Slope

The Hindu has an excellent article by Jackie Ashley, published first in The Guardian. Her central argument is that the war in West Asia is creating new pigeon-holes for liberals, and that violence begets violence. She calls for open discourse that she believes would show better results in West Asia. While I agree on most of the points she raises;

It does come down to values. Just as I loathe the idea of separate Muslim schools in Britain, or forced marriages, or female genital mutilation, so I cannot swallow the notion of a rising Islamic world that despises western and liberal values. To be a liberal does not mean shrugging your shoulders at those who loathe you and hoping that somehow everyone will get on. A world divided between Christian bible-belt fundamentalists, powered by US military and oil interests, and Islamist Qur'an-belt fundamentalists, ruled by misogynistic mullahs, is a bad world, period.

I have my reservations about the binaries she appears to construct between the fundamentalist Islamic world and the liberal western world. Perhaps it is the ill-advised use of Muslim schools followed by forced marriages and female genital mutilation, that gives the impression that she is indeed constructing that binary. Moreover, her comments on Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad;

Then there are those who think we should support poor little underdog Iran against bullying America over nuclear weapons, while taking President Ahmadinejad's effusions about wiping Israel off the map as just amusing banter from downtown Tehran.

Do not appear to be as nuanced as her other statements. She makes no mention whatsoever of the USA's role in aggravating Ahmadinejad, and its intentions of waging war in Iran. That the USA was displeased with Ahmadinejad's election in 2005 and was committed to regime change was quite apparent. This, in spite of the fact that this election in Iran was very respectable, with a 60% turnout, and would qualify to be called a democratic election by any definition.

Siddharth Varadarajan argued in this brilliant article that Ahmadinejad's strategy was one of self-preservation against the USA's threat of regime change.

Elected to the presidency last year, Mr. Ahmadinejad quickly — and correctly — concluded that there was no way the Bush administration would give up its goal of 'regime change' in Iran.

Varadarajan also concluded, quite convincingly, that Ahmedinejad's salvos against Israel, and the resumption of nuclear enrichment, although well within Iran's legal rights under NPT (if at all legality is relevant in the current crisis) were clearly targetted at gaining greater space for manouevering.

By bringing the crisis to a boil at a time when Washington has neither the military nor diplomatic capability to launch an attack — let alone persuade the world to impose sanctions — President Ahmadinejad has, paradoxically, increased his country's room for manoeuvre. His letter to Mr. Bush is part of the same strategy, except that it comes as a soothing unguent to the high octane grandstanding of the past few months.

Of course, Bush, with characteristic insight, subtlety and decorum got Condoleezza Rice to reply, declining Ahmadinejad's offer.

Ashley makes no mention of these facts, and merely portrays Ahmadinejad is a raving lunatic committed to the fall of Israel. Of course he is all that. But he is also a democratically elected world leader, who does NOT possess nuclear weapons, neither has the capability to produce them for a long time to come, and is only talking about nuclear enrichment for peaceful purposes. And last heard, nuclear bombs had not been classified under peaceful purposes.

Moreover, Ahmadinejad wasn't the one who considered the nuclear option against the USA.


And it wasn't Ahmadinejad who dropped Fat Man on Nagasaki this very day sixty-one years ago, killing more than 2,14,000 civilians.

I quote Seymour Hersh who wrote that very scary article in The New Yorker,

“Bush and Cheney were dead serious about the nuclear planning,” the former senior intelligence official told me. “And Pace stood up to them. Then the world came back: ‘O.K., the nuclear option is politically unacceptable.’ ”

Two related articles:
An article by William Kristol, evocatively titled It's our War, in the neocon mouthpiece The Weekly Standard calls for military action against Iran, and direct involvement supporting Israel.

Also read this spine-chilling testimonial to the effectiveness of military training: an interview of Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the Enola Gay, where he said he wouldn't hesitate to do it again.


But the real crux of Ashley's argument is in this point she brings up.

So before going any further, let us remind ourselves just what fundamentalist Islam wants and what kind of society it aspires to. As a woman, I can't regard the compulsory veiling of sisters in the Middle East by men who threaten them with violence as just another cultural choice. Iran, the state that most eagerly supports Hizbullah and had come closest to achieving Shiaism in one country, is a place where women are hanged or stoned to death for adultery, where homosexuals are hunted by the religious police, and where an anti-Semitism that would have been regarded as a little extreme in late-30s Munich is daily fare.Excellent, and unexceptionable point.

The situation is similar to Jacques Chirac's ban on religious symbols in France. Protestors at the time were caught in a no-win situation. On the one hand , they were opposing a ban that outlawed an intrinsic part of a community's cultural identity. But on the other hand, they were also perpetuating the oppression of women in those sections of society.

Another historical instance was the underground revolt against Ataturk's secular reforms. Many women chose to wear the burkha/ hijab in an act of protest, particularly when Ataturk's government started showing signs of authoritarianism.

(Orhan Pamuk writes beautifully of this tension between the subversive/ traditional/ Islamist forces and authoritarian/ secular/ Western forces in his Snow.)

My argument is not that Islam can be subversive/ progressive etc. I am assuming that it can, as much as any other ideological, ethical or religious persuasion. My argument is that these binaries that have been, and are being, contructed are inadequate to express our everyday tragedies.

In both cases, the dilemma lay between the social and the personal, the community and the individual.


The partisan involvement of America in West Asia, had had an impact on the spread on the popular culture of the region. A story in the NY Times talks about how western culture, and all talk of peace are under attack in much of West Asia. Although this story, which also appeared in today's Asian Age seems to suggest otherwise. And Condoleezza Rice's desire to build a "new Middle East", is just plain scary.

The increased disaffection with America involvement (or the lack of it), has directly contributed to the fighting forces. Recruitment to the Islamist armed resistance has never been easier, and this is likely to have a long-term effect on peace initiatives in the region.

Before 2003, the hardest step for any Islamist movement was recruitment, noted Mohamed Salah, an expert on Islamic extremist movements who writes for the pan-Arab daily Al Hayat from Cairo. Moving someone from being merely devout to being an extremist took a long time. No longer, he said.

The casualty in the current war in West Asia has been pragmatism, and peace as a result. Fundamentalism on either side is clearly eating into the middle ground.


The New York Times reports that the argument in Israel is only between war and more war. and the only criticism waged by even organisations like Peace Now is how to wage war better.

There is no real peace camp in Israel right now, says Yariv Oppenheimer, the secretary general of Peace Now, which has pressed hard for a deal with the Palestinians and on June 22, before this Lebanon war, called for a halt to air raids over the Gaza Strip. “We’re a left-wing Zionist movement, and we believe that Israel has the legitimate right to defend itself,” Mr. Oppenheimer said. “We’re not pacifists. Unlike in Gaza or the West Bank, Israel isn’t occupying Lebanese territory or trying to control the lives of Lebanese. The only occupier there is Hezbollah, and Israel is trying to defend itself.”

Mr. Oppenheimer of Peace Now said the only dispute in his group was over timing and tactics.

Coming as it does from an organisation dedicated to peace in West Asia, that's a sobering thought unlike any other.

Peace activist Uri Avnery, founder of Gush Shalom wrote about the impossibility of peace under the present political climate in Israel in this article. (It was also published in an edited version in The Hindu, but I can't seem to find it.)

This crisis may take us closer to the Bush regime's ideal New Middle East, and further away from lasting peace.


Categories: world, west.asia, USA, politics, war

this is a serious post

I still have some South Indian techie blood in me.

I'm convinced.

Image courtesy gapingvoid.


And I thought all that bad blood had drained out of me when I took Eng Lit, but. The last two days, I've had fun customizing my template, adding buttons and installing BlogRolling. All you techies (South Indian and non-South Indian) who are thinking, "Shee, I knew how to do that three years back" may please keep your snorts and smirks to yourself. Kausha, I'm looking at you!

Anyway, as a result of my newfound southindianess with technology, I also decided to category tag my posts, an idea I stole from falstaff.

angry fix has been archived category-wise here, and all future posts will carry category tags. There are also permanent links to the categories in the sidebar. Scroll down for best results.

And while I'm at it, I might as well tell you that DesiPundit linked to my post on the Broadcast Bill.

Now I never said this wasn't going to be a self-indulgent post.

Oh, and before I forget: I love buttons.


UPDATE: Forgot to mention who gave me the del.icio.us tip: enabler of my internetz experience, pretender to a medieval literary throne (albeit in a nunnery) and ardent student of discipulus anglicus. Thank you!


Categories: blogging, personal, pointless

allegories of power

I have not known states to actively engage in creating allegories of their own excesses in power. Apparently, China has an active interest in the subject.

China massacred more than 50,00 dogs in an effort to curb rabies.

Good thinking there. No Dogs = No Rabies.

The five day long massacre in the Yunnan province spared only military guard dogs and police canine units, says CNN.

The systematic cruelty is mindnumbing.

Dogs being walked were taken from their owners and beaten to death on the spot, the Shanghai Daily newspaper reported.

Owners were offered 5 yuan (63 U.S. cents; 49 euro cents) per animal to kill their own dogs before the teams were sent in, they said.

Report in CBS News. [via Indian Writing]

See also reports in The Telegraph and Austin-American Statesman.

I must confess I am not much of an animal lover, and was terrified of dogs till I met Kausha's Shadow. (Read Kausha's touching farewell to Shadow here.) But the point of this post is about a government that can be so brutal, so unequivocal, and so efficient in its perversity.

This post is about a government that can order unarmed pro-democracy protestors to be shot in broad daylight, and has managed to keep the actual number of dead a State Secret till today. This post is about the government that can show its people this when they Google for 'Tiananmen'.

Perhaps the Chinese government is indeed creating allegories of power, and its corruption. And of course, the rest of the world will be abuzz with condemnation. Safe in their mostly-conceptual democracies, and their theoretically-free media and entirely-imagined civil liberties.

Perhaps China is an exception. Perhaps I fear India is casting itself in the same oppressive mould. I wrote earlier about the Broadcast Bill and it continues to worry me.

Perhaps it's merely a bad day, and tomorrow's going to be another fine working day.

Categories: world, politics, government, rights

blank editorials? big brother? again!

The Emergency, and Express' famous blank editorial, have become standard images to invoke when faced with any curbs on press freedom. Metaphors, almost.

At least for me, because I had never seriously considered it a possibility that an Indian government would proactively try to curb the press. Not blatantly, at least. And not until now. After all, this is India and this is the same government that passed the Right To Information Act.

Perhaps, things are changing. First, it was the blog block sometime back. Then the trimming of the RTI leaving it in ineffectual tatters. And now, it's the Broadcast Bill. At least, the blog block was a cause for much mirth. However, if the UPA government pushes through the new proposed Broadcast Bill 2006, it won't be funny, and pkblogs won't be around to help us workaround the ban.

While the proposed Bill is ostensibly an attempt to regulate the Indian media, its consequences could be disastrous. The Bill includes attempts to curb media ownership monopoly, cross-media investment, 'sting' operations and objectionable content.

Now what exactly is objectionable has been blissfully left undefined. This shall be judged by authorised persons, who incidentally are senior police officers and district magistrates.

While I believe that 'sting' operations need some kind of regulation, I do not think it should be enforced by the government. It should rather be an editorial policy against sensationalist coverage of stray events that do not tell us anything new. When Tehelka conducted their Operation West End, they were trying to prove a very relevant point that corruption was rampant in the highest circles of power. When India TV conducted its sham sting on poor Shakti Kapoor, I doubt if they even had a point to prove. Except for the TRPs, of course.

Anyone who has heard the adverb rupert used in conjunction with the verb murdoch will agree that media monopoly is a real and tangible threat to our democratic right to information. While the attempt to curb cross-media investment is a reasonable idea, it is a law that must be debated and discussed before it is tabled. All important Bills are tabled first and discussed later in India. It happened with the Reseervation Bill, and now with the proposed Broadcast Bill.

To enforce the provisions of the Bill, a new governing body, Broadcast Regulatory Authority of India, or BRAI, will be formed. This Indian Express report says that BRAI will have to sift through 15,070 hours of feature films and 20,881 hours of news material.

The Bill will also empower authorised persons to seize equipment if a channel is suspected of misdemeanour. The government could also declare a few subjects holy cows, which will make it illegal for the media to even report the events. Such sweeping powers in the hands of governmental agencies, as Tehelka's example showed us some years back, can have disastrous results.

Barkha Dutt's Hindustan Times column neatly summarises the consequences for the aam janata. Whatever one makes of her statement that the 24-hour news channel may be a monster, but it’s also a relentless beast that lets no detail escape its gaze, one can't help but agree with the broad premise of her arguments. She also draws an excellent parallel between the Bill's provisions for shutting down transmission if a channel promotes “disharmony, enmity, hatred or ill will” between communities, and Narendra Modi's reasons for temporarily blocking some private channels during the Gujarat carnage in 2002.

Outlook which also has a list of the most contentious clauses in the Bill, asks whether members of Parliament would have given their consent to a sting operation conducted to expose corruption in the MPLAD schemes. Read the entire story by Anuradha Raman here.

If this Bill is passed, there won't be too many reasons for us to call ourselves a free and democratic nation. This article draws parallels between Pakistan's existing Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) and India's proposed BRAI, and how it could radically undermine the right to information.

This story has only begun. I am hoping the media outcry will force the govenrment and I&B Ministry to back down, and table a more janata friendly law.

DNA has a story here, and so does News Watch.
More reports on Indiantelevision.com here, here, here and here.
See also an editorial in The Hindu by Ammu Joseph.

Endnote: For comic relief, read about the Information and Broadcasting Secretary, Mr. S.K. Arora's ultimate babu's grievance: that of legislation that is too short.

The agenda is to design, elaborate and expand the present censorship guidelines. If one looks at such content guidelines in the US and the UK, such legislation runs into hundreds of pages. Here in India it's brief.

How unfair, surely. Read the entire interview here.


Categories: government, politics, india, MSM, rights

the good me and the real me

The Dunce, celebrity photographer and P3 journalist, has an update on my life.

Point to note: The Dunce has made a career out of remembering people's drunken confessions and publishing them on the Internet. Case in point? Here.

eliot and gumball machines

Where the hell was this when my Lit class was looking for t-shirt designs? Now, it appears!

More hilarious cartoons here.

homing pigeons and other alternatives

BREAKING NEWS: angry fix has heard from reliable sources that birdsellers in Crawford Market are jubilant. Apparently, the demand for homing pigeons is skyrocketing.

A Crawford Market birdseller looking for pigeons he's not sold yet.

The more internet-savvy birdsellers claim to know the real reason behind the sudden surge, but they aren't telling.

When we contacted our friendly neighbourhood policeman, he said he believed the ban on blogs was the prime cause for the increase in demand for homing pigeons. He said terrorists, desperate to contact each other, and crippled by the ban on blocks, were forced to use homing pigeons. He said, not without a touch of pride, that terrorists, considerably cramped by the acute shortage of homing pigeons, have been thinking of using other alternatives (see below), but the other alternatives have been thinking otherwise.

'Maybe not!'

At the time of going to the press, the government was considering a ban on all winged creatures to cut off the terrorists' communication channels.

Watch this space for more exclusive coverage of developments.


AHA! Blogspot sites are back. Well, much to the chagrin of the birdsellers, maybe there will be a decrease in the demand for homing pigeons. Meanwhile, thank you, PK Blogs, for services rendered etc.

So, life returns to normal. Alas, we are no longer the Undercover Reporters I'd imagined we were. A good long unfettered surf will have to do, I suppose.


JUST IN: In an entirely unrelated incident, the sale of satellite phones has been steady and has seen neither fall nor rise in the wake of the homing pigeon crisis.


Pssst: An excellent post from Menon where he laments that the government has denied him his fundamentally fundamental right; the right to rebellion by not blocking Wordpress sites. Sorry, Menon, it's too late now.

Pssst Pssst: Don't miss the Comments section.

hindi chini bhai bhai

Nice image, that.

Well before we've caught up with China in economic terms, we've learnt their arbitrary internet cencorship techniques. Only our government is not efficient at what they are doing (thank god for small, very small mercies). I wrote earlier about ways to bypass the government's blocks.


I am amused at how suddenly the government has started taking bloggers seriously. It almost fills me with pride to be banned.

You know, till yesterday, I was just an unread blogger. But now, I'm an Undercover Reporter type. Still unread, but that's ok now that it's an underground activity. Everyone knows the worst thing that can happen to an underground figure is popularity.

I wish our PM blogged. I would've left this comment on his blog:

Dear Dr. Singh, you didn't think it was going to work, did you?

It was never going to work. Unless of course, my man, you are ready to go the whole hog and ban everything on the internet, except the odd inoffensive candyfloss site.
(Aside: Times of India, don't worry, you'll do ok. Maybe, he'll even make you The Only Legal Paper in India.)

But Dr. Singh, I don't understand how you okayed a half-baked measure like this is, it being the Age of the Geeks, and all.

But then, I forget a cardinal principle. Every government needs its own USP, it's own Uniquely Stupid Proposition. Is this going to be yours? I am disappointed.

What we can be sure of, is that this ban, be it temporary or long term, will achieve nothing. Even the resentment I felt when I realised the government was behind this blockade has faded now to much mirth and laughter. In fact, I hope there are more such quixotic attempts at internet censorship.

If nothing else, at least it'll be entertaining.

how to bypass the government's blocks (updated)

I suppose by now, everyone has heard now about the government's decision to block blogs.
I know for sure all blogspot sites are blocked.

Here's how to bypass the government's blocks.

Thanks to Pranav Gandhi.

Related stories in the Business Standard, Blog Herald, Web Pro News, Moneycontrol and The Financial Express.

Shivam Vij has blogged about the issue.
Rediff News has also published an article by Shivam Vij.

UPDATE:
India Uncut has more detailed information on how to bypass the weblock.

Neha Vishwanathan has covered the issue too.

So has Mridula, who was one of the first bloggers to react to the block.

Bloggers Against Censorship has some useful information on ISPs that have blocked blogs, and more importantly, on how to bypass the ban.


An open question, in the CNN-IBN style:
Are bloggers spooked or flattered by this ban?

this article will never make it to DNA

I have been sick of mushy and vacuous media coverage of the Mumbai blasts where maudlin poor writing has been passed off as human interest stories.

I wrote earlier about the DNA's brand of idiocy, but it is by no means restricted to that godawful paper.

I had almost forgotten what a well-written human interst story was, till I read this piece by Dilip D'Souza.

I link to it with gratitude.

Thank you, Dilip.

a eulogy to DNA

This post is exactly what the title says: a eulogy to a wasted paper.

Unlike this media reviewer at Dance with Shadows, I never had high expectations of the DNA.

Even so, I think their editorialists and columnists have outdone themselves in the aftermath of of the Mumbai blasts. For a paper that's primarily Mumbai-centric, they've covered it the worst, and offered the most retarded and regressive opinions. Consistently.

In a way, they are performing a vital function: rounding up the worst writers in Mumbai and printing them in one newspaper.

So I thought it's time we returned the favour and selected the worst of the lot and linked to the worst of them.

Here they are:

Malavika Sangghvi on Mumbai ko gussa kyon aata hai (No. No pun in that title. Really.)
Sounds like it's about the 'spirit of Mumbai', but it isn't. It's really about how the 'introspective DNA writers (like herself) are so much more intellectual than the sensationalist broadcast types.

Malavika Sangghvi again on... take a wild guess... The Spirit of Mumbai.
No comments, just a verbatim excerpt:

Because they can take away our life lines, our loved ones, our peace and our security. But they can’t take away one thing — our spirit. It takes more than bombs to make Mumbai’s spirit die.

A Very Deep Article by R.Jagannathan on how Amartya Sen's argument of multiple identities is inadequate and how it makes more sense to read David Berreby, a group selection theorist and author of Us and Them: Understanding Your Tribal Mind. His central argument is that groups clash not because of any underlying political or economic reasons, but because they are essentially different. Because human beings need to pigeon hole themselves. Basically the whole Clash-of-Civilizations-type argument. Read a chapter excerpt from Us and Them here.

Using David Berreby's apparently excellent ground-research to counter Amartya Sen's 'cul-de-sac' (his words), R.Jagannathan concludes:

In other words, the bombers of Mumbai might well have decided they are going to kill a lot of “Hindu” enemies before appending a reason for their decision.

And:

If we want our people to be less communal, lectures on secularism or criticism of the RSS and VHP will not help. Instead, one needs to create a shared sense of community among Hindus and Muslims in actual practice to erase the communal divide.

Sumit Ganguly calls for aborting the Indo-Pak peace initiatives because that will somehow help the situation. I didn't quite discover how exactly. So please read the article and let me know.

And the crowning glory is an article by the editor himself: Gautam Adhikari, calling rather pompously for the Prime Minister to be seen and heard to be a leader. The central argument in this analytical meditation is that Dr. Singh must learn his lines before he appears on television.

UPDATE:
Not to be outdone in the race for Worst Paper in the Language, The Indian Express has carried this article by Jaithirth Rao.

peace in the time of terror

In the aftermath of the Mumbai bomb blasts, it is important that the Indo-Pak peace initiatives are not sidetracked.

Of course, Pakistani politicians like Kasuri do not help. His statement that the 'best way' of dealing with extremism in South Asia is to tackle 'real issue' of Jammu and Kashmir can only be described as stupid and immature.

Predictably, the Indian External Affairs Ministry is up in arms, prompting Kasuri to deny his statement.

Now whether or not Pakistan had a role in the blasts, it is in our long term interests to take the peace initiatives further. And as of now, most analysts are indeed suggesting that Pakistan had a hand in the Mumbai blasts, as they had in the London blasts and the averted New York blasts. (Details here.)

The international community (which, I suppose, means the US and its cronies) are silently denouncing Pakistan for subcontinental violence. Condoleeza Rice refused to hold a joint press conference in Washington recently. Not that that's an earth-shattering event, but it's an unequivocal singal of Pakistan falling out of favour. India can, and must, build on that sentiment across the world, and force Pakistan to shut down its terror training camps. Leading Pakistani newspapers like The Dawn have cautioned the government against the ISI's unchecked power in the country. It is something that India, and the world must look at too.

Although Kasuri's statement was immatue and in appalling taste, it does have an element of truth in it. We need to look at our long-term interests, and go forward with the peace process which has gained momentum in the past year.

And the media plays a big role in this process of consensus-building, and in avoiding blame game. suspending the peace process will only worsen things, and justify the militants' arguments that India is not committed enough to the cause of Kashmir and other Indo-Pak issues.

Postscript:
Menoncholic has an excellent post about how he's sick of Mumbaikars being patted on their heads by the world with something approaching avuncular pride and commended for their ‘resilience’.

Incidentally, The Indian Express has an op-ed by Farah Baria on the same subject.

important information

• Mumbai Help has information on how to send SMSes via email, as well as lists of dead and injured.
  
  
  
• Most importantly, a list of blood banks that need blood urgently and contact numbers of hospitals in Mumbai.
  
  
  
• Mumbai Police has a hospital-wise list of the dead and injured.
  
  
  
• The Maharashtra Government's website has official figures of the dead and injured, as well as information on measures taken.
  
  
  

more links

The Hindu & PTI: 190 dead
A report in NYT
The Guardian quotes analysts: Lashkar-e-Taiba behind attacks

a snap and a link

Outlook has some automated feed from Reuters.
Read reports in Outlook on the Mumbai blasts here.

more than 100 killed

The Times: More than 100 killed

meta-panic

A colleague is watching a video on 9/11.
To his credit, he's not doing it out of choice. It's something he's working on.

I don't think he sees the irony of watching a video of 9/11 during the bomb blasts in Mumbai.

nothing really, just another blast

Another crisis in Mumbai.
At least the Shiv Sena manufactured crisis was comical.

I find I am insenstive to the idea of bombs and danger and death.
There is no shock anymore. There have been just too many, too often.

I remember being quite nervous when I last took the trains a month back.
A friend of mine routinely gets off mid-way because he is scared.

Shock has been replaced by paranoia.
A bustling city has become a paranoid city, at least for me.

Some news links just in case you haven't been able to find any.
Most of these links are via Google News India.

104 dead: Latest report from Reuters, filed at 20.34

60 dead: The Hindu

Explosions Hit Train Stations in India: Washington Post

Blasts kill 23 on Mumbai rail network: Bangkok Post

Will keep uploading as long as I am stuck at work.

Imhunting for ideas

Imhunt has written about a project we discussed sometime back.

For those who came in late, Vivek has plans to start a website that hosts a large number of views on Current Affairs, Arts, Culture and the other things that people like talking about. You know stuff like, 'Did Mika actually squeeze Rakhi Sawant while he kissed her?'. The idea per se isn't new, then Google too didn't pioneer search engines, they bettered it. So its the treatment that is important. Does anyone have a contructive idea about how the whole 'new treatment' must happen?

The project is still, very fashionably, 'under discussion'.
(Read, I am sitting on my butt and doing very little about it.)

Please send in your ideas/ suggestions to Imhunt or to me.

PS: Restrict your suggestions to the broad idea, and NOT to whether Mika actually squeezed Rakhi Sawant. Thank you.

'reservations' in the civil services

Today's Hindu has a very disturbing op-ed by Sharad Yadav.

Excerpts:

For the last civil services examination, around 214 of 425 seats were general open merit seats. Out of the first 214 candidates, 50 were from reserved categories. Forty of them were from OBCs. But the UPSC refused to allow reserved category candidates to enlist themselves as general candidates. Twenty seven per cent of 425 is 117: this is the exact number of candidates belonging to OBCs who were declared successful. Even those in the top 10 were classified as reserved category candidates!

It is shocking that candidates belonging to reserved categories are interviewed separately. They sit for the written examinations alongside non-reserved category candidates, but when the time of interview comes, they are segregated. The interview board is well aware of their social background and discriminates against them while giving them interview marks.

Read the entire article here.

attention is finally paid to such a man

Just the other day I was thinking it was about time someone wrote a play about me, and what do you know, here it is!

The Waiters by The Dunce
Written in the style of Messrs Beckett and Ionesco, and featuring the inimitable Vivek Narayan!

Anyway, this also a good time to preen over the fact that I must be one of the few living persons to have 2 plays written about them.

Here's the first: A Smutty Play.

Man, I feel like such a protagonist!

* Walks off stage left to die a slow, horrible death.