The Band Most Likely to Put You to Sleep

Sasha Frere-Jones writes in the The New Yorker,

In a 2005 piece in the Times, Jon Pareles called the British rock group Coldplay "the most insufferable band of the decade," and he placed the blame on the band’s front man and singer, Chris Martin, whom he called a "passive-aggressive blowhard." Earlier this year, in a study sponsored by the hotel chain Travelodge of the bedtime habits of 2,248 people in the U.K., Coldplay topped a poll of music choices that would help people fall asleep. Coldplay apparently relieves what Travelodge called the "pressures of modern living".

Robert Cochrane of culturecatch.com says,

Rarely have a band been more appropriately named.

His piece also contains the following intro:

"It seems that all men have their price, and Coldplay have obviously found Brian Eno's. Crossing his palm with silver, and much of it, can be the only excuse for his lamentable excursion into the pretentious world of Christopher and his dull friends.

And Ryan Dombal on pitchforkmedia.com offers this,

Earlier this year, Britons voted Coldplay as The Band Most Likely to Put You to Sleep. The poll, conducted by hotel chain Travelodge, had Chris Martin & Co. beating out aural Ambien including James Blunt and Norah Jones. Even for a band known to take solace in their overarching pleasantness, the drowsy coronation doubled as a harsh insult. After all, Coldplay is a rock band. A grandma-friendly, Radiohead-normalizing, disarmingly polite rock band led by a man who sounds like he's still yearning for puberty perhaps...but a rock band nonetheless.

And while Will Hermes in rollingstone.com gives a thumbs-up to the album, he does worry about Chris Martin's incoherence as a lyricist. He ends with this,

Coldplay's desire to unite fans around the world with an entertainment they can all relate to is the band's strength, and a worthy goal. But on Viva la Vida, a record that wants to make strong statements, it's also a weakness. Sometimes, to say what needs to be said, you need to risk pissing people off.

What is 'delimitation'?

Here's a stab at answering that question, in the latest News Junkie podcast. This one was done with National Affairs editor Diptosh Majumdar. And just to catch up with book-keeping, here's the link to the one I did on the Pakistan elections in February, with Deputy Foreign editor Suhasini Haidar.

Imperial Life in the Emerald City

Fixing what wasn't broke, and not keeping in mind the long-term implications of any decision. That's how Rajiv Chandrasekaran's Imperial Life in the Emerald City - Inside Iraq's Green Zone may be summed up. It's an indictment of America's bungling in Iraq and details the events in Baghdad between the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 and the handing over of power by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) to the Iraqi interim government in 2004. To be specific, it's the story of what went on in the Green Zone, a sealed area bang in the middle of Baghdad around what used to be Saddam's seat of power, the Republican Palace.

The surge is currently on in Iraq, and while there are mixed opinions as to how it will all turn out, it sure looks like the country will see a redrawing of boundaries or 'partition' sometime in the future. In an excellent piece in theatlantic.com, Jeffrey Goldberg explores that and other possible futures of the middle-east. I'm personally not so sure if partitioning Iraq is a good idea. Haven't we all lived through the horrors of the consequences of partition, most of us vicariously? You may want to check out Christopher Hitchens' 2003 piece on the legacy of the British policy of partition and their intended and unintended consequences in Europe and Asia as well.

Here's a review that will tell you why Imperial Life... is such a cracking read. Still not convinced? Listen to the Guardian Unlimited podcast which had Chandrasekaran talking on, among other things, why he chose the title he chose.

Bangalore Royal Challengers

Ye gods! What was the flamboyant Vijay Mallya up to? One would have thought he would have insisted on picking up stars known for their cricketing skills AND flair. But the team for Bangalore Royal Challengers [he let the name slip out at the press conference] reads like this - Rahul Dravid, Anil Kumble, Jacques Kallis, Zaheer Khan, Mark Boucher, Cameron White, Wasim Jaffer, Dale Steyn, Nathan Bracken, Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Shivnarine Chanderpaul.

Here's a lot that wouldn't look out of place at a funeral. Don't get me wrong, Rahul Dravid and Anil Kumble are my favourite cricketers. And Kallis, Boucher, Chanderpaul and Bracken rank among the best today. But I don't see a buzz around this team, given that Mallya buys everything keeping image in mind. Somehow I'm finding it difficult to visualise thousands of swooning teenagers.

Of course if they win, it's going to be different. Let's hope they don't plan to do it by collecting singles.

Does Mumbai belong to Maharashtrians?

Is Mumbai exclusive to Maharashtrians? This should be a no-brainer, but since Raj Thackeray reignited the debate, it's an issue worth exploring, if only to see what turns up.

The timing first. What pressed the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena founder to drum up the issue now? That it was the Bachchans laying the foundation stone for a girls' school in U.P. is too convenient an answer and the theory doesn't hold up anyway. He could have turned the pages of any Mumbai daily and picked up a 'reason'. Elections are a year away, so there's a danger of his campaign peaking too early. Perhaps it is simply that he saw an opportunity to settle one issue once and for all - that of succession. Uddhav, Bal Thackeray's son was of course chosen to head the Shiv Sena in 2004, eventually leading to a parting of ways between Raj and the Shiv Sena. But Raj perhaps wants to show to Maharashtrians that he is a more natural or spiritual successor to Bal Thackeray.

Let's now deal with the concept of entitlement, the justification for which reads like this - Mumbai should belong to me because it's the capital of Maharashtra and I'm a Maharashtrian. But even this is not a fully accurate picture. As Ramachandra Guha points out in India after Gandhi, Bombay as it was known prior to 1995, was a bilingual province of both Marathi and Gujarati speakers. It had been settled by people from different linguistic communities - Marathis, Parsis, Gujaratis and Europeans. It was only in 1960 that Bombay was declared the capital of Maharashtra. So, are all those who built Bombay and their descendants to be kicked out then? Or will they be declared honourary citizens? So on and so forth in this vein will only lead to bizarre conclusions. Of course, Raj Thackeray is not asking for this, he only wishes that migrants would stop pouring in - something I'm sure every Mumbaikar has thought of at least once. What marks him out is that he's the head of a political party and is interested in reaping the dividends of raking up what's a hugely emotional issue.

Now, to the future. Should all those 'Bhaiyyas', Bengalis and South Indians who're, even as we speak, stuffing all their belongings into trains be stopped at the gates of Mumbai? Raj Thackeray blames this non-stop influx of immigrants for the creaking infrastructure of Mumbai. But neither he, nor the Shiv Sena or the Congress and the NCP have turned the mirror onto themselves for apportioning blame. One glance at the much-trumpeted Bandra-Worli Sea link should tell you the story - it was to be completed in 2004, but more than four years later the project is yet to be finished. Ditto for the Mumbai metro and other projects planned to ease congestion in the city. The Worli-Nariman Point sea link and the Nava Sheva-Sewri link are both still at the blueprint and tender stage.

Onto to Amitabh Bachchan. It was suggested that Mumbai's most famous resident had done nothing for Maharashtra. If Bachchan had settled in Delhi, would the state have suffered? Clearly, the answer is no. No state is dependent on one individual. But Mumbaikars in that case wouldn't have benefited from his spending - remember his income runs into crores and crores. I'm willing to bet Bachchan has made a difference to hundreds of people, Maharashtrians included, in the last thirty-odd years in the city, without even knowing it. And this is not counting the number of people his films employed. The more the number of hits he churned out, the more people in the film industry benefited by the incomes they derived from those films. Include all those wide-eyed tourists paying auto & taxi drivers for a glimpse of his twin homes Jalsa and Prateeksha, and you begin to see Bachchan for an industry that he is.

Let's tackle the last and most difficult question. If I lived in Mumbai, should I be forced to speak Marathi? A furious discussion on IBN7 on Tuesday yielded a few interesting answers. There were those who said it is compulsory for all migrants to learn Marathi, a few said it is okay if they show that they're trying and just one who said learning the language wasn't necessary. Curiously enough, I thought the best answer came from the anchor himself. He asked a what-if question. If he were to be posted to Tamil Nadu for a year, then to Karnataka and Maharashtra, should he then have to learn Tamil, Kannada and Marathi? My personal opinion is that nobody should be forced to learn anything. People who choose not to learn a local language are missing something special. It's their loss.

The issue really gets tangled when 'outsiders' expect localites to speak in their tongue. This has happened in Mumbai and more recently in Bangalore as well. Local residents are then justified in their anger. But I would still desist from forcing anybody to learn my language, simply on the grounds that doing so, would destroy the very edifice of liberty and democracy that India is built on.

Perhaps the last word would in this debate should go to a Sardarjee, Jaspal Bhatti, a unique and special man in that he turns to satire in order to get his point across. He got it right when he 'formed' a Divide India film festival, where movies of all languages would be screened, but with one rider. Maharashtrians could only watch Marathi films. Punjabis only Punjabi films and so on. People entering theatres would be asked for an ID card with domicile status. And what would happen if, say a Bengali slipped in to watch a Kannada film? Bhatti's recommendation is simple - we shall beat him up before we administer first aid!

Originally posted here.

The News Junkie Podcast

A personal promise that I would follow every idea I had to its logical conclusion in 2007 resulted in the News Junkie Podcast, which is now three episodes old. The idea behind the podcast on the CNN-IBN website is to strip down any issue to its bare essentials, so as to allow for a greater understanding. The format is simple - I have a conversation with someone who is familiar with the topic being discussed.

For instance, the second podcast was on the US elections and tackled basic issues such as, 'What is a caucus?', 'How does it differ from the Indian process?' and so on. Surya Gangadharan, CNN-IBN's foreign editor gave his interesting take on the polls.

The third and the most recent one was on the just-concluded test series between India and Australia. I spoke with Mukul Kesavan, cricket fan, writer of the immensly popular blog and book, Men in White, The Ugliness of the Indian Male and Other Propositions and one of the more articulate people around.

The podcast also allows me to pick any topic (that's topical) and do pretty much what I want with it. No editorial agendas.

It's still a work in progress, and you may see a difference between the first podcast (on the Karnataka political crisis with National Affairs Editor Diptosh Majumdar) and the one with Kesavan. And hopefully, there are droves of people who would want to listen to it regularly.

Beef's no holy cow

Some farmers give aging cows to Hindu temples. At the Vedanaiki Solisvaran Temple, near the cow market, prayer leader Dharmasivan says temple leaders are too busy with day jobs to care for the donated cows. So the temple sells them in the market. Dharmasivan has seen a cow being slaughtered there. "We know it's wrong," he says. "We can't stop it."

That was WSJ journalist Daniel Pearl in an article he wrote, How Many Ways Can You Skin a Cow? In Hindu India, There Are Plenty, perhaps a few months before he was abducted and killed in Pakistan.

The piece sums up the many Indias in the country we call home. I love the irony of it all. Incidentally, the cow's probably one of my favourite animals. And it seems I'm certainly not the only blogger to think so.

My favourite Polish export (not the Pope)

Reader's block. You're just not able to settle into a book. You try one, discard it, pick up another, only to toss into that pile you call 'for later'. You begin to feel you'll never finish a book again. You blame yourself and become so irritable that one day your partner tells you to quit belly-aching, roll over and go to sleep. And then one day you bump into a book that brings back the magic of reading, and all is well again. As you may have guessed by now, it was so with me until I came by Travels with Herodotus by Ryszard Kapuscinski.

I first came across Kapuscinski in The Soccer War, as the 4 1/2 readers of this blog already know. So I won't bother with a long introduction, to Kapuscinski, the writer and journalist. Suffice to say, Travels with Herodotus was his last book before he died earlier this year, a part-memoir and part-meditation.

Kapuscinksi begins by saying he was presented with a copy of Herodotus' The Histories just as he was headed for his first overseas assignment - to India. In fact, Herodotus remains a reassuring presence as the young Polish journalist embarks on his journeys with eagerness, naivete and the air of one who is blithely unworried about where his next meal will come from.

Reading through the book, one doesn't quite know who's the better teacher - Kapuscinski or Herodotus. But there's no need to compare. Both of them have valuable lessons for the journalist. Kapuscinksi, then in his 30s, writes of Herodotus,

I was quite consciously trying to learn the art of reportage and Herodotus struck me as a valuable teacher.

And he goes onto to tell you why the ancient Greek writer was a good reporter.

But to the extent that it is possible to do so - and, given the epoch, this speaks to a tremendous expenditure of effort and to great personal determination - he tries to check everything, to get to the sources, to establish the fact.

That should tell you not to google.

A little later in the book, Kapuscinski speaks of a moment of epiphany while in Algiers. A coup has taken place, but on the streets there's nothing to show for it,

...it was here in Algiers, several years after I had begun working as a reporter, that it slowly began to dawn on me that I had set myself on an erroneous path back then. Until that awakening I had been searching for spectacular imagery...it was the fallacy that one can interpret the world only by means of what it chooses to show us in the hours of its convulsions, when it is rocked by shots and explosion, engulfed in flames...

Lessons for journalists, lessons on writing, Travels with Herodotus also underlines some of the faultlines of the world we live in today, the struggle between militant Islam and the rest of the world for one. It is certainly a book to be read again & again. Let me quote Kapuscinski one final time,

One must read Herodotus's book - and every great book - repeatedly; with each reading it will reveal another layer, previously overlooked themes, images and meanings. For within every great book there are several others.

There are at least a couple of more books of his I'd like to read, Shah of Shahs and Imperium, among them. Who woulda thunk RK would one day replace Joseph Conrad as my favourite Polish writer?

I think I'm a fan of...

... Neil Gaiman. (And no, this isn't about Sandman.)

A few moons ago, I did a piece on what fantasy fiction to read after Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows, for which I was in turns praised and criticised. I took the help of my friend Jayaprakash, someone who's read more fantasy (and other genres) than anyone else I know. He'd then recommended three books/series I hadn't read, one of them being Coraline, by Neil Gaiman.

I managed to track down Coraline while in Bangalore. At a little over a 160 pages, this is a slim novel about a young girl (Coraline), who, while exploring her new house, discovers a passage leading into another world. A world where her 'other mother' and 'other father' want to trap her and never let her go. How and if she managed to come back is what the tale is all about.

Coraline has received many awards in the 4 years since it was first published. And it's easy to see why, for the book breaks new ground and steers clear of your typical fantasy set-pieces and settings. Philip Pullman, of His Dark Materials fame said in his review,

Gaiman is too intelligent and subtle to invoke the supernatural - this is much more mysterious than that - and too wise to let Coraline face the horrors alone: she has an ally in a sardonic and very feline cat.

Ah yes, the cat. That did it for me. The black cat, reviled and used as an evil conceit in literature for long, is one of the good guys in this tale. That alone deserves a thumbs up!

A few hours after finishing the book, the partner and I watched Stardust, at the friendly neighbourhood theatre. Another one of Gaiman's creations, it has all the ingredients of a good, children's movie. I say children's movie, but it's perfect for adults as well. Even the bad parts are good, if you know what I mean. Since I'm feeling too lazy to write more, I'll point you to a Roger Ebert review. He's critical of the film, but since he is a bleeding critic that's okay.

Six blind men

"You need every edge in a terrorism investigation, and a blind officer with languages could be a powerful weapon."

Yes, you read that right. The Belgian police have taken on 6 blind men, because the blind have a more acute sense of sound and can thus be far more effective when listening to wiretaps. For instance Sacha van Loo can not just figure out whether the suspect the police is tracking is driving a Mercedes or a Honda, he can even tell you which number has been dialled, by just listening to number tones on a mobile phone. He's a linguist as well, which enables him to identify the nationality of kidnappers and terrorists just by listening to them speak.

Sort of reminds you of the Six blind men of Hindoostan, doesn't it?

A candlestick for Uncut

For a little more than two and a half years, my daily regimen in office has been: walk in, switch on comp, chat with colleagues and login to India Uncut, the moment the machine's warmed up. And so I'm chuffed that Amit Varma has won the Bastiat Prize for Journalism, 2007 for his columns in Mint.

I met Varma while covering the 2005 India-Pakistan test series. During the first test in Mohali, this long-haired friendly chap, mentioned he had a blog. Since then, IU has been a regular fixture in my life. His writing points me towards where I hope to go some day.

Here's his post on winning the prize. More power to him!

Writers & Editors

Writer Kurt Vonnegut Jr. scoffs at those who feel creative writing courses are infra dig:

"Listen, there were creative writing teachers long before there were creative writing courses, and they were called and continue to be called editors."

Read the entire piece at New York Times, which talks about how life need not be the only 'school' for writers.

In Rainbows

If you'd asked me, same time last year if I listened to any Radiohead, my answer would have included the standard Creep (go ahead say 'hah'!), High and Dry and Fake Plastic Trees. Just three songs, and only because of incessant TV-watching during my college-going, MTV/Channel-[V] days.

I'd pretty much given up listening to music regularly in the years after leaving Bangalore. Mainly because,
a. I shared an apartment with a guy who digs astrology and little else.
b. I didn't have a music system or even a tape recorder.
c. My music-loving pals weren't around to push me into discovering anything new.

And so on and on until about 4 years later, facing the prospect of a two-hour daily commute, I bought an I-pod Mini. Thus began a musical renaissance - now I was listening to stuff because I wanted to, and not because someone said Van Morrison (or someone else) was cool. I listened to lots of old bands, scoured the net for new ones and eventually made my way to Radiohead. Around the same time, a friend presented The Bends and OK Computer as a wedding gift, so I ended up logging a few kilometres in the neighbourhood park with these guys.

So a few days back when Radiohead announced they would be offering their new album In Rainbows only via downloads, for any price we were prepared to pay, I jumped. Offered my credit card for two pounds (and 45 pence for the online transaction fee) or roughly 170 rupees.

“Digital technology has reintroduced the age of the troubadour. You are worth what people are prepared to give you in the digital age because they can get it for nothing”, the New York Times puts the band's new gamble rather neatly,

Although a third of those who downloaded the album decided to pay nothing for it, I at least have the moral high ground + I'm really happy that Radiohead will get all my money since there's no record company to take a fat piece of the pie. All in all, a great idea, and hope pals Thermal and a Quarter will do something similar. They offered their third album Plan B free to download originally, and I sincerely hope they will choose to sell album IV through the net.

First impressions, the album seemed to pick up where OK Computer left things. But having not heard Kid A and subsequent releases, I don't know how accurate my observations are. It certainly gets better with every listen and my current favourite is the insidious Nude. I think I will reserve my judgement for later. For the moment, only one grouse - am I the only person who thinks Thom Yorke's crooning makes it difficult to pick out the lyrics?

Bourne vs Cercle Rouge

Sometimes you need to be told exactly why a particular book is great or a cricketer valuable. The same of course can be said of films, and in particular Le Cercle Rouge. Funnily enough, the opposite holds true about the other film I saw this week, The Bourne Identity. It seems that you sometimes need to be told why a film is not so good as well!


The Bourne Identity

An immensely entertaining film. The partner and I came away satisfied with promises that we'd be back for a second viewing. What I couldn't figure out however, was whether Ultimatum is a great film and if it really deserved all the critical acclaim it got. Rottentomatoes gave it a 93% freshness rating; which is, if you are a regular 'ttentomato', as close as it can get to a hundred percent. But on the other hand, this rating only reflects the popular verdict.

David Bordwell* offers a more nuanced view in his post Unsteadicam Chronicles. For those who don't know this - The Bourne Identity has been entirely shot by a camera called the Steadicam which doesn't require a tripod or stand. So when Jason Bourne runs, the cameraman - onto whom the camera is strapped to - runs behind him. When he jumps, the cameraman follows suit. What it yields is a wonderfully spontaneous effect because the viewer is right there with Bourne. At this point, let me quote Bordwell,

The handheld camera covers three mistakes: Bad acting, bad set design, and bad directing. It’s worth considering, as some of Ebert’s correspondents do, what Greengrass’s style may serve to camouflage.

Perhaps the non-stop action also hides loose plotting. Some questions worth considering, Why would the CIA set up office in a building so easily viewable from another building across the street? How does Bourne get into Noah Vosen's office? How does he steal the Top Secret file? (Fine he recorded the phone conversation, but how did he get over the thumb scanner problem?) So it turns out that the film is not perfect after all. But it sure razzle-dazzles you. And I would certainly watch it again if I got the time. In the meantime do read all three of David Bordwell's posts on the film, they touch on a number of issues, from the fight scenes to the way the film was shot, edited and scripted.

Le Cercle Rouge (The Red Circle)

This is a 1970 heist or gangster film by Jean Pierre Melville, of French New Wave repute. If The Bourne Ultimatum has in its entirety 3200 shots, making for an average of just 2 seconds per shot, then Le Cercle Rouge is the opposite. Shots are carefully & lovingly composed, they last several seconds, in some cases minutes as well. There's not much dialogue, which forces you to concentrate even more on the screen. The movie's also shot in a predominantly blue tone with large amounts of yellow as well, as you can see from the still here.



More stills can be found at Eternal Sunshine of the Logical Mind post from where I swiped this photo. Everything about this film is different from Bourne, even its 'freshness' in Rotten Tomatoes. Le Cercle Rouge manages the almost impossible 96% freshness rating.

For those whose secret wish is to have an all expenses paid stint at a film school, the Senses of cinema page on Melville's directorial style is very revealing. His characters, to quote from the write-up,

often appear trapped within a particular moral framework or aesthetic design

...which explains a lot. For instance it helps you understand why Corey is stoic, unassuming and honourable. Finally, why name the film Le Cercle Rouge? The Criterion Collection page takes a stab at explaining the symbolism in the film. Mighty interesting stuff. You wouldn't lose much by reading it. And yes, in case you're afraid I missed the whole point, the film was fun to watch! : )


* Was introduced to the fantastic David Bordwell by Jayaprakash.

Offsite blues

Green and verdant Punjab, where effective irrigation enriches land that's been described as a 'happy geographical accident' (5 rivers flow through the land) rolls by. But in this horror of a bus, there's not much time to appreciate that. The photo of the bus reveals benign interiors, but surely you know pictures can lie? During our journey one of its interior light panels fell off and as night approached the bus began to look like a seedy bar complete with yellow lighting, beer fumes, kebab smells and cigarette smoke.

Office offsites are supposed to help you slow down, consider your work and brainstorm. You're supposed to come up with bright ideas that will eventually help your company sell more ads at better rates. But I suspect our bosses had settled on slightly less ambitious goals - come back safely without killing each other, seems to have been the brief. And so it was that a motley bunch of political reporters, news features people, bureau reporters and cameramen began their journey from Delhi to a resort in the Shimla hills that nobody had heard of.

The music system in the bus - if it could be called that - was of stone age vintage. The kind that plays tapes with the volume fading up and down. Not that the selection on offer was exciting either. This should help you understand the kind of stuff we had to listen to, "Sab tho milake peethain hain, paani sharaab mein. Mein peegayaa jawani sharab mein." Anyway, our Sikkimese friend fiddled with the tape 'deck' and conjured up a servicable arrangement, consisting of a mic placed next to his Nokia phone on speaker mode. Thus were we treated to mono sound renditions of 'Leaving on a Jet Plane' (hah!) and other such classics.

The journey reminded me of Calvin & Hobbes and the trips Calvin's family takes for character-building. In the books its rainy and the fish aren't biting. Here the journey was uncomfortably long and nauseating. Several colleagues experienced catharsis in a plastic bag, if you know what I mean.

Koti resorts wouldn't set your pulses racing, but at least the rooms and toilets were clean, the water decently hot, the food strange but certainly not mouldy and the views excellent. We went on a really long, aimless walk that saw us shimmy up and down forested slopes and ended up on a golf course where we played cricket. (!!) Too tired to go back walking, some of us hailed a bus. Didn't know bus conductors could be courteous, but here apparently they are. That evening, the icing on the cake - the India-Australia Twenty20 semifinal in front of a bonfire.

What kind of people go on a three-day vacation and spend two of them travelling? I wouldn't want to explore that quesiton myself, simply because it could lead to disturbing conclusions about us, but no, the trip wasn't a dead loss. I got to know some of my colleagues, found out that the Patna correspondent really cannot function without three cell-phones and tasted single malt whiskey for the first time.

Too tired to attempt returning all the way by bus, we settled on the Shatabdi Express back to Delhi. It should have been a nice journey, with our sleepy heads nodding in unision to the rhythms of the train, but for some reason or the other some of us got into a version of the 'what ails India' discussion. The two loudest chaps were the pro-control leftist and the free-market liberal (that would be me) and I think we pretty much pissed people off in the train. While disembarking, a lady asked my colleague if we were wannabe journalists. It was that kind of trip.

In sight of Twenty20

This piece was cross-posted here.

Like most people I was ambivalent about Twenty20 cricket. Sure, the name was eye-catching (pun unintended) but it seemed like a distraction for a guy who was only beginning to appreciate the finer nuances of test cricket. Yes, I was happy that the format had re-ignited interest in England where cricket was dying a slow death, but if I ever thought about it all in the Indian context, it must have been only in passing.

Until a few months ago. Channel-surfing, I happened onto one of those anonymous recordings on a sports channel, a South Africa-Australia game (or was it?), in which something strange was happening on the field. The captain Graeme Smith seemed to be having a running conversation with the commentary box while fielding during the game, discussing tactics. At first I was puzzled; then it dawned on me. This was clearly some fun show, somewhat on the lines of Nokia Football Crazy. The realisation that it was in fact a Twenty20 international, with the whole Cronje-earpiece-given-a-delicious-twist was enough to make me fall off the proverbial chair.

Since then, all attempts to catch it live on TV have come to nought. I even missed India's lone match during the South Africa tour last year. But like many of you, I'm happy to be carried off in this cloud of hype (happily there has been little, given India's show during the other World Cup) and I've made up my mind to make an offering of the next few evenings to the sport.

Knowing nothing about the experience of watching this format, I thought I might as well go back to the past when ODIs, or Limited Overs cricket as it was called then, had knocked on the doors of test cricket. It was with much amusement that I discovered a certain Geoff Boycott had faced the very first ball in the very first one-dayer in 1971. And dipping into the Wisden Anthology offered what could be seen as a parallel comment. Don Bradman, writing in the 1986 Wisden Almanac said of ODIs,

...the Achilles' heel of the limited overs match, [is] namely the premium placed on defensive bowling and negative and defensive field-placing...But let me turn to the good thing about one-day cricket. It rids the game of the unutterable bore who thinks occupancy of the crease and his own personal aggrandisement are all that matter. It demands fieldsmen of great speed and agility with good throwing arm...

In contrast to what many stone-faced pundits predicted, one-day cricket revitalised tests and I'm hopeful that Twenty20 will do some good for this game we love so much. But lets for the moment leave the last word to Sambit Bal who looks at all angles in this excellent piece,

...For the true lover of the game, Twenty20 deviates from cricket's central, most appealing qualities: the length, the leisurely pace, the turns in the plot, the contest between bat and the ball, and the individual contests within the team game.

Kapuscinski: a window to the world

It's probably happened to you before. You hear of someone famous for the very first time, and suddenly you begin to see his name cropping up in the oddest places - conversations, newspapers and TV - in the next few days.

I first came across this strange sounding fella Ryszard Kapuscinski, in The Granta Book of Reportage. The very first piece in the book, The Soccer War is by this Polish journalist. This short war between El Salvador and Honduras in 1969, reportedly sparked off by a football match defeat during the 1970 World Cup qualifiers, is described vividly and concisely by Kapuscinski. I was hooked at once.

A few days later I ran into him in A Mighty Heart (the brave life and death of my husband Daniel Pearl). In it, Daniel Pearl gifts Shah of Shahs by Kapuscinski to Mariane Pearl while he's courting her.

Now I see that Travels with Herodotus, his memoir is available in bookstores. The premise of the book is tantalizing - Kapuscinski's wanderings from an early age across the world as a journalist, segueing into thoughts on Herodotus, one of his heroes.

Thanks to a self-induced embargo on buying any more books till October-end, I won't be able to lay my hands on it. Any rich uncles out there?

P.S. Kapuscinski, the internet tells me, was a favourite for the Nobel prize for Literature a few times, but never received it. He died early this year and has a devoted following around the world. He wrote in Polish, but his crisp writing shines through even in translations.

Two Lives

With just two pages to go before I finished Two Lives, I remembered Vikram Seth is also a poet. A quick scan through the pages after I was done revealed that though this is no The Golden Gate, his novel in verse, the prose is nothing if not rhythmic. Almost as if Seth sung out his lines as he wrote them. (I actually think such writing would be instinctive for him). Here's a simple example I've picked out,

"A patient rang the doorbell; he was in acute distress. Henny told him that Shanti was too ill to help him. But when Shanti came out of his room and recognised the man, he told Henny that he could not go into hospital without treating him."

Of course, one might think there's not much to that sentence, but I'm pretty much convinced that rhythm matters deeply to Seth. Perhaps it is because the only other book I've read of his is An Equal Music. In Two Lives, Seth also reveals something of the way he approached this book,

In a double biography, an intertwined meditation, where the author is anomalous third briad, sometimes visible, sometimes not, there are intriguing possibilities of structure. For one thing, in what order should one recount events? ...Though I now know where to end this book, I did not at first know where to begin it...

It's a reminder that even celebrated writers are mortal (and therefore like me!), and that matters of form, structure and substance need to be worked on even by them, much like a random post in any blog! Two Lives also answers partly, the quesiton of what happened to the Jews who survived Hitler and what life was like for those who stayed on in Berlin after it was bombed out in the closing days of World War II. Indeed, this review quotes a line that may tell you more about the man who shaped the 20th century,

Shanti left Germany in 1936, though not before coming across Hitler in a Berlin park, surrounded by SS men. "He had a bridge in his mouth and he was made up with lipstick and all," he told the author. "I thought he might be a homo - but later on I found out they were going to film him in color."

My Favourite Communist and The Perfect Solution

My Favourite Communist

With all this constant newsroom talk of Leftist politics and Leftist hypocrisy, the only 'Comrade' I can stand these days is a gentleman named Psmith, with a silent 'P'. I'd think Psmith's legendary coolness would be a refreshing change from Comrade Karat's fervent, "if the Centre has any self-respect, it should recall the Ambassador" line.
On second thoughts, Comrade Karat's own inspiration to turn the Left into 'biting dogs' rather than 'barking' ones in recent days must have stemmed from Psmith's gentle explanation in Leave it to Psmith, in which our hero casually explains after pinching an umbrella, "other people merely talk about the redistribution of property; I practise it."!!

Overheard at the CPI headquarters

Indeed, I can see it all in my mind's eye. At the same time as Comrade Karat's above-mentioned epiphany, Comrade Bardhan must have finished Psmith in the City. And much in the manner of our protagonist in his 2nd adventure, called up Comrade Karat to complain about Capitalist Manmohan, "...he always set us down as mere idlers. Triflers. Butterflies. It would be a wholesome corrective for him to watch us perspiring like this in the cause of Communism."*

'Great Scott,' Karat would have said, 'there'll be a row.'

''Some slight temporary breeze, perhaps,' Bardhan would have said. 'Annoying to men of culture and refinement, but not lasting.' And so on and on...

The Perfect Solution

Smooth operator though he is, I suspect Comrade Psmith would find the Congress-Left slug fest too distasteful to enter. And although there's an uneasy truce on, everyone (journalists, sources to journalists, bosses, blog pundits) says it's a matter of time before our communist brethren take up the cudgels again. We will then have to turn to the services of that famed troubleshooter Jeeves.
Don't be surprised though, if the Perfect Jeeves Solution to the Left-UPA marital crisis involves a few unexpected engagements (a la Bobbie Wickham or Honoria Glossop), a few maidens pushed into a handy swimming pool and a fearsome aunt or two!

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* all quotes pinched from Psmith in the City and Leave it to Psmith. In the original line, Psmith uses the term commerce instead of communism.

Monday farce: Left is right

An electric shock at the bath is not the best way to begin a Monday, but that's precisely what I had to endure as I stretched my right hand to the tap this morning. A few seconds later I stood, dripping on the bedroom floor with the dual knowledge that I'd received a nasty shock and screamed - not a term you would associate with a man.

Indignation at the way our rented house is wired aside, there was some irony as well. It was as if the gods were punishing my right hand, on World Left-Handers Day. Had I not committed various blasphemies for a left-hander in recent years? From deigning to shake hands with my right (as the world at large does), to eating with my right in temples where using your left is frowned upon. Indeed it occurs to me, you would have been 'punished' too if you're a lefty, for accepting to live in a right-handed world. Aren't shirt buttons, jeans zips, car doors, scissors - even guitars designed to the convenience of our heavily populated evil cousins?

When I become a dictator I shall abolish all right-handedness and even change our lexicon while I'm at it. In Hindi, the left hand is also known as Ulti haath, which translated means 'upside down'. In Kannada, the right hand is called Balagai, which literally means 'hand of strength'. My Ministry for Good Behaviour and Speech will have one John McEnroe as Chief Minister. The head of my Anti-Narcotics and Psychotropic Substances Bureau will be Jimi Hendrix. And I shall coerce Sourav Ganguly to be Minister for Diplomacy and Foreign Relations. You get the picture right? And finally, anyone who hasn't read Ursula K Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness will be punished!