The ladies are back with a bang. They have trounced their rivals and sent them scurrying. Time for the two lovely lasses to preen and pose in front of the cameras. Although I have never met either of them, I feel I have known them all my life. And this is true you know. I have known them for most of my life.
Take Dr J Jayalalithaa. I first set my eyes on her as a little boy when she acted in a Hindi film called Izzat. The film had Dharmendra in a double role. The two avatars were brothers but the dark Dharmendra was the illegitimate and the fair Dharmendra the legitimate son of a rich man. Fair Dharmendra had Jayalalithaa wooing him while Tanuja was cast opposite the Kaala Dharmendra. I remember Jayalalithaa being very coquettish and singing a song that went ‘Ruk ja zara, kidhar ko chala.’ The men in the audience went crazy flinging coins at the screen with every naughty gyration of the plump beauty. I was at a pre adolescent stage and couldn’t figure out what the fuss was all about. All I understood was the woman making all those funny moves was a very important person to be greeted with all those coins.
The years passed and a lot of good and bad things happened to Jayalalithaa and I kept on reading about her in the newspapers. She had aged but her eyes could still dance like the old days. Then Simi Garewal had her on her show. Now for some reason I find Simi Garewal incredibly sophisticated and incredibly stupid. She works herself and the person she is interviewing into some kind of strange sentimental frenzy and the results are hilarious. Only two of her guests have seen through her. One is the wily Shahrukh Khan who made her do a quawali with him and the other is Jayalalitha who refused to do any rhona dhona on Simi’s show and instead sang a song, completely overshadowing the bland and anorexic Ms Garewal.
Simi is not likely to invite Mamata di for any of her shows. I don’t think they will be able to communicate with each other. Simi speaks in what she imagines to be the queen’s accent and Mamata di has her own style. After her victory, she declared to the media ‘I am a simple man.’ I am not sure whether the gender mix-up was accidental. Think about it. Bengali men wear all these intricate kurtas that are almost effete in their ornamental glory. And here is this woman who shows a marked preference for the dullest of saris. Going by gender stereotypes Mamata di is the only man left in the West Bengal political arena while the bhadrolok left leaders hang their heads in lojja.
Mamata di has always been macho. She made incredible sacrifices to emerge as the political force she is today. When I was working in Kolkata, almost two decades ago, the grapevine had it that she got her own party men to beat her up so that she could blame the left parties and turn into a martyr. I wonder how many men would be brave enough to get beaten black and blue for their political ambitions.
But whatever be the idiosyncrasies afflicting them, they are both women of grit and a thousand times better than the rivals they have beaten fair and square in the elections.
We need women like Jaya akka and Mamata di and not that silly Simi.
Monday, May 16, 2011
Friday, May 6, 2011
Himalayan trek, Osama, Obama, Kanimozhi, Feminist poets & I Am...
I go climbing mountains for 10 days and look at all the things that happen behind my back. As soon as we got back to the hotel from the Himalayan trek, I was informed about the death of the world’s terrorist number one. I was totally disoriented after climbing up and down and the lack of toilet facilities while trekking had added to my head feeling all addled. So when one of the youngsters in the team told me grimly that Osama had been hunted down in Pakistan, I confused the man with multiple wives to be the US president. My first reaction was ‘OMG, there’s going to be repercussions. I am sure the US will declare war on the rest of the world.’ Everyone present in that lobby looked at me strangely but I took it to be something they were doing out of habit. All through the trek they had looked at me in a similar fashion because I was always chanting aloud- ‘Dear God, I don’t know why I did this but if I come out of this alive, I will turn into a good person.’ I guess God believed me and took away Osama instead. But I am not sure whether I was all that wrong in assuming the US president to be a terrorist. Maybe not Obama but Rambo Bush definitely qualifies to be in the most wanted list.
I wish Obama had waited for one more week to carry out the covert operation. That way I wouldn’t have missed Arnab Goswami or Rajdeep Sardesai giving their silly interpretations after the event. They are such entertaining gentlemen. They do this voice inflection thing, raising and lowering it alternately in order to drive home a point. I am sure both of them thundered afterwards whether India will have the guts to take a leaf out of the American adventure and embark on a similar operation. Of course we shouldn’t listen to these silly chaps. It’s much better to be on the sidelines and watch the souring of the love story between the ex allies. Since we Indians are Bollywood trained, we can always sing a background ditty ‘Do Hanson ka joda bichad gaye re...’ Very apt, don’t you think?
Behind all these frivolities, my heart goes out to the citizens of Pakistan. They are caught between the devil and the deep sea. If they support the US, the Al Queda would get them and if they support Osama’s outfit, Uncle Sam will take their trip. They hardly have any space to manoeuvre a peaceful existence for themselves.
Another of those sad news is about the great feminist poet Kanimozhi’s imminent arrest. No one’s talking about her poetry any more. Not even Barkha Dutt. And we all know how much she supports poets, even bad ones like Kapil Sibal. I haven’t read any of Kanimozhi’s poems because they are in Tamil but I believe they are quite firebrand.
I came across one of those written by a young poet in English. It had lines like ‘the man in the bus stares at my breast.’ I don’t get it. A creep staring at the body parts of a woman is sexual harassment. He should be slapped and not have lines in a poem dedicated to him. I hope Kanimozhi doesn’t write such senseless lines. In any case she will be in an all women prison so no man is likely to stare at her. Hopefully she will organize a kavi sammelan inside the prison and have Sibal as the chief guest. Dutt can cover it live for NDTV, enraptured expression et al.
What I didn’t miss after coming back is ‘I am’ by Onir. I should have but since it covered serious issues like child sexual abuse, I thought it was my duty to watch this one. The film turned out to be a damp squib. There are four stories crisscrossing each other. The first one was quite nice with Nandita Das and Purab Kohli in it. Das wants to have a child through sperm donation and Kohli is the young donor. They meet even though they are not meant to and the encounter is both funny and touching. Das is self assured as always but it’s Kohli who walks away with the acting honours. He is very good as the confused young man getting slowly attracted to the character played by Das whose child he is meant to ‘father.’ The next one has Juhi Chawla and Manisha Koirala and is set in Srinagar. Chawla plays a Kashmiri Pandit who was hounded out of the valley with her family as a child and is forced to go back to sell her house. Koirala plays the friend she left behind. The situation has tremendous possibilities but not much of the potential is realized because both the actors find it difficult to cease being divas. So they spend much of the time in the segment walking the minefield streets of Srinagar as if they were walking the ramp for Rohit Bal. The child sexual abuse segment again fails to deliver. Anurag Kashyap is very good as the abuser but the rest of the cast sucks. Shernaz Patel playing the mother of the victim hams it like anything. Patel is a competent actor but here she is reduced to a caricature and grimaces and winces so many times while delivering the few scanty lines the script accords her that you end up wondering whether she had a stomach upset on the days she was shooting. But the worst is reserved for the last segment.
Try and get this if you can. Rahul Bose is a successful corporate professional in Bombay. He picks up a hustler one evening and buys him dinner. Then they go for a drive. Bose can’t take the hustler home because his parents are visiting. So now we know that he has kept his sexual orientation a secret from his family. Next he parks his car in a lonely street and takes off his shirt and proceeds to pile on to the hustler. So now we know he is also stupid. A burly cop intercepts them and slaps around the indiscreet lovers. He also threatens to put both of them behind bars. Bose agrees to bribe the cop and hands over his ATM card to the hustler to withdraw the cash, presumably with the password. So now we know he is really really stupid. Bose and the cop are left alone with each other after the hustler goes to the ATM and Bose instead of putting on his shirt again stands provocatively next to the cop with his arms around his chest like he was Mamta Kulkarni posing for the Stardust cover. The cop gets turned on and forces Bose to give him a blow job. Later Bose discovers something that he should have known all along when he set out on the misadventure. That the cop and the hustler are partners in crime. And he is devastated. Seriously. What is gay about the whole thing? Won’t a pair of heterosexual lovers have the same experience if they were making out in a car and the cops intercepted them? The Delhi court has allowed two consenting adults of the same sex to make love but in the privacy of their homes or at the very least in a hotel room but certainly not in public places. As for the actors, Bose is plain terrible especially when he is giving coy angles to the cop. But both Arjun Mathur as the hustler and Abhimanyu Singh as the cop do a commendable job, though that’s not enough to rescue the concluding portion from drowning the impact some of the earlier segment leave behind.
One more thing happened while I was away. Rediff brought out an interview of mine about ‘The Boss is not your Friend’. Going through the comments thread I realized some ‘bosses’ have been as rude to me as I have been towards them in the book.
Life always evens out things.
I wish Obama had waited for one more week to carry out the covert operation. That way I wouldn’t have missed Arnab Goswami or Rajdeep Sardesai giving their silly interpretations after the event. They are such entertaining gentlemen. They do this voice inflection thing, raising and lowering it alternately in order to drive home a point. I am sure both of them thundered afterwards whether India will have the guts to take a leaf out of the American adventure and embark on a similar operation. Of course we shouldn’t listen to these silly chaps. It’s much better to be on the sidelines and watch the souring of the love story between the ex allies. Since we Indians are Bollywood trained, we can always sing a background ditty ‘Do Hanson ka joda bichad gaye re...’ Very apt, don’t you think?
Behind all these frivolities, my heart goes out to the citizens of Pakistan. They are caught between the devil and the deep sea. If they support the US, the Al Queda would get them and if they support Osama’s outfit, Uncle Sam will take their trip. They hardly have any space to manoeuvre a peaceful existence for themselves.
Another of those sad news is about the great feminist poet Kanimozhi’s imminent arrest. No one’s talking about her poetry any more. Not even Barkha Dutt. And we all know how much she supports poets, even bad ones like Kapil Sibal. I haven’t read any of Kanimozhi’s poems because they are in Tamil but I believe they are quite firebrand.
I came across one of those written by a young poet in English. It had lines like ‘the man in the bus stares at my breast.’ I don’t get it. A creep staring at the body parts of a woman is sexual harassment. He should be slapped and not have lines in a poem dedicated to him. I hope Kanimozhi doesn’t write such senseless lines. In any case she will be in an all women prison so no man is likely to stare at her. Hopefully she will organize a kavi sammelan inside the prison and have Sibal as the chief guest. Dutt can cover it live for NDTV, enraptured expression et al.
What I didn’t miss after coming back is ‘I am’ by Onir. I should have but since it covered serious issues like child sexual abuse, I thought it was my duty to watch this one. The film turned out to be a damp squib. There are four stories crisscrossing each other. The first one was quite nice with Nandita Das and Purab Kohli in it. Das wants to have a child through sperm donation and Kohli is the young donor. They meet even though they are not meant to and the encounter is both funny and touching. Das is self assured as always but it’s Kohli who walks away with the acting honours. He is very good as the confused young man getting slowly attracted to the character played by Das whose child he is meant to ‘father.’ The next one has Juhi Chawla and Manisha Koirala and is set in Srinagar. Chawla plays a Kashmiri Pandit who was hounded out of the valley with her family as a child and is forced to go back to sell her house. Koirala plays the friend she left behind. The situation has tremendous possibilities but not much of the potential is realized because both the actors find it difficult to cease being divas. So they spend much of the time in the segment walking the minefield streets of Srinagar as if they were walking the ramp for Rohit Bal. The child sexual abuse segment again fails to deliver. Anurag Kashyap is very good as the abuser but the rest of the cast sucks. Shernaz Patel playing the mother of the victim hams it like anything. Patel is a competent actor but here she is reduced to a caricature and grimaces and winces so many times while delivering the few scanty lines the script accords her that you end up wondering whether she had a stomach upset on the days she was shooting. But the worst is reserved for the last segment.
Try and get this if you can. Rahul Bose is a successful corporate professional in Bombay. He picks up a hustler one evening and buys him dinner. Then they go for a drive. Bose can’t take the hustler home because his parents are visiting. So now we know that he has kept his sexual orientation a secret from his family. Next he parks his car in a lonely street and takes off his shirt and proceeds to pile on to the hustler. So now we know he is also stupid. A burly cop intercepts them and slaps around the indiscreet lovers. He also threatens to put both of them behind bars. Bose agrees to bribe the cop and hands over his ATM card to the hustler to withdraw the cash, presumably with the password. So now we know he is really really stupid. Bose and the cop are left alone with each other after the hustler goes to the ATM and Bose instead of putting on his shirt again stands provocatively next to the cop with his arms around his chest like he was Mamta Kulkarni posing for the Stardust cover. The cop gets turned on and forces Bose to give him a blow job. Later Bose discovers something that he should have known all along when he set out on the misadventure. That the cop and the hustler are partners in crime. And he is devastated. Seriously. What is gay about the whole thing? Won’t a pair of heterosexual lovers have the same experience if they were making out in a car and the cops intercepted them? The Delhi court has allowed two consenting adults of the same sex to make love but in the privacy of their homes or at the very least in a hotel room but certainly not in public places. As for the actors, Bose is plain terrible especially when he is giving coy angles to the cop. But both Arjun Mathur as the hustler and Abhimanyu Singh as the cop do a commendable job, though that’s not enough to rescue the concluding portion from drowning the impact some of the earlier segment leave behind.
One more thing happened while I was away. Rediff brought out an interview of mine about ‘The Boss is not your Friend’. Going through the comments thread I realized some ‘bosses’ have been as rude to me as I have been towards them in the book.
Life always evens out things.
Friday, April 22, 2011
Ajeeb Amar ki Gazab Kahani
Amar Singh is a real clown. He imagines he is on a comeback trial. He was all over the television channels yesterday. This time he has found himself a brand new brother in Digvijay Singh. Together they held a press conference to discredit Shanti and Prashant Bhushan. And Singh forgot he was implicating himself as a patron of corruption when he decided to bell the Bhushans. I think the man is beyond caring now. All he wants to do is to claw back into public consciousness. He has met the predictable end of all fixers who outlive their purpose. They make the mistake of believing they have formed deep enduring bonds with those who they service. But once they have served their purpose, they turn into embarrassments for the very same folks they were on backslapping terms with. Like in the case of Singh, the Bachchans who never tired of acknowledging that Singh was family were quick to dump him no sooner did he have a fall out with his political mentor Mulayam Singh Yadav.
A couple of years ago we had a journalist from Lucknow visiting us. She had me in splits over stories of Amar Singh. Apparently he had this palatial house built for his good friend Jaya Prada on the banks of Gomti. Whenever they are in Lucknow, they are found in the balcony of this ‘Taj Mahal,’ soaking in the sunset. The whole thing sounded like my favourite fairy tale- Beauty and the Beast.
Singh is a born entertainer. He has even acted in a Malayalam film with Dimple Kapadia. Imagine the man keeps on getting humiliated and snubbed in public by someone or the other be it Sonia Gandhi or Jaya Bachchan or Mulayalam Singh Yadav. And then he gets to spend time with the most beautiful women in the country. I guess life always finds a way to compensate. The journalist also told me that there are these ‘Amar Chalisas’ available in UP. They are a bit risqué but very entertaining. If anyone has a copy, please mail it to me. I am dying to read it and since I am an adult I am allowed to.
Singh is in good company when he decides to give himself more importance than he deserves. Arvind Kejriwal, Kiran Bedi and Santosh Hegde are faring no better. What is all this nonsense about the government trying to discredit them and how hurt they are by the whole thing? They opted to take on the responsibility of framing the bill. Surely they weren’t naive enough to believe that they can take on the establishment and the system will respond with a lot of grace. They should get real and get on with doing the job they are meant to do. We all have skeletons in our cupboards and no one is naive enough to believe that the members of the civil society as they like to refer to themselves are an exception to this rule. They should stop throwing these silly tantrums. Besides they are just going to be drafting a bill. No one has empowered them to do anything more. For that they have to go and fight an election and win without bribing the electorate. It’s as simple as that. And the Bhushans should be replaced in the committee by some young and upright lawyers. Maybe someone who has just graduated from the National Law School and has all the legal knowledge to make a valuable contribution. By being rigid on this, they are just mirroring the behaviour of the politicians they oppose. Bas...bahut ho gaya. Ab kaam karo. Press conferences mat karo.
If I am sounding irritated, it’s because of this new Tanishq advertisement that has Amitabh and Jaya Bachchan in it. They are terribly affected...even more cloying than they were in Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham. I hope it’s not one of those sequel kind of ads where Abhishek and Aishwarya would also make an appearance at a later date.
If that happens I will definitely smash my television set.
A couple of years ago we had a journalist from Lucknow visiting us. She had me in splits over stories of Amar Singh. Apparently he had this palatial house built for his good friend Jaya Prada on the banks of Gomti. Whenever they are in Lucknow, they are found in the balcony of this ‘Taj Mahal,’ soaking in the sunset. The whole thing sounded like my favourite fairy tale- Beauty and the Beast.
Singh is a born entertainer. He has even acted in a Malayalam film with Dimple Kapadia. Imagine the man keeps on getting humiliated and snubbed in public by someone or the other be it Sonia Gandhi or Jaya Bachchan or Mulayalam Singh Yadav. And then he gets to spend time with the most beautiful women in the country. I guess life always finds a way to compensate. The journalist also told me that there are these ‘Amar Chalisas’ available in UP. They are a bit risqué but very entertaining. If anyone has a copy, please mail it to me. I am dying to read it and since I am an adult I am allowed to.
Singh is in good company when he decides to give himself more importance than he deserves. Arvind Kejriwal, Kiran Bedi and Santosh Hegde are faring no better. What is all this nonsense about the government trying to discredit them and how hurt they are by the whole thing? They opted to take on the responsibility of framing the bill. Surely they weren’t naive enough to believe that they can take on the establishment and the system will respond with a lot of grace. They should get real and get on with doing the job they are meant to do. We all have skeletons in our cupboards and no one is naive enough to believe that the members of the civil society as they like to refer to themselves are an exception to this rule. They should stop throwing these silly tantrums. Besides they are just going to be drafting a bill. No one has empowered them to do anything more. For that they have to go and fight an election and win without bribing the electorate. It’s as simple as that. And the Bhushans should be replaced in the committee by some young and upright lawyers. Maybe someone who has just graduated from the National Law School and has all the legal knowledge to make a valuable contribution. By being rigid on this, they are just mirroring the behaviour of the politicians they oppose. Bas...bahut ho gaya. Ab kaam karo. Press conferences mat karo.
If I am sounding irritated, it’s because of this new Tanishq advertisement that has Amitabh and Jaya Bachchan in it. They are terribly affected...even more cloying than they were in Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham. I hope it’s not one of those sequel kind of ads where Abhishek and Aishwarya would also make an appearance at a later date.
If that happens I will definitely smash my television set.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Child Sexual Abuse
Talking about it leaves you slightly sick in the stomach. It’s like coming across a badly mangled dog on a highway that has been run over by a passing vehicle. You immediately look away pretending not to have noticed. And yet it registers somewhere in your psyche and makes you want to throw up whenever the sight comes back to haunt your memory. Sexual abuse of any kind is tormenting enough. Be it a look, a touch or more. But when it happens to a child, the aftermath is all the more devastating.
I suspect just as we have more people than any other country, the instances of child sexual abuse are also that much more. I am sure our cities have more children living on the streets than anywhere else and they are preyed on constantly by the adults around them.
The most sheltered of environment is no deterrent for the pervert who picks on children as victims. Most families hide the shameful secret of a relative or friend who has messed around with their child or at least tried to. So imagine the fate of those children who don’t have anyone to look after them.
The plight of young boys is as bad if not worse than girls. We are always more careful about the girls in our family. There are greater restrictions around them. With boys, our conditioning is that they can manage. Even to acknowledge something like this can happen to them is difficult to accept for us. And most abuse victims tend to internalise the guilt of the abuser. They fall into the trap of believing it is their fault. With boys, this tends to happen much more. Men feel more ashamed to talk about themselves as victims. So the chances of the crime against young boys going undetected are much more.
We had this neighbour when I was a young and he pretended to be very fond of children. If he came across a group of us playing in the street outside, he would pick one of us and hug that child tightly and go on mumbling ‘should I bite your cheek.’ All of us felt uncomfortable with him but the entire neighbourhood thought of him as this guy who was really fond of children. If any adults were around, they would just laugh at our discomfiture. Then we had this class teacher in Class IV in the missionary school I went to. This was a co-educational school and his way of punishing us for not doing our homework was to make us turn our back to the class, force us to pull down our pants and briefs and deliver five or six blows on our bare butts with a ruler. The caning didn’t hurt as much as the humiliation.
The girls had to lift their skirts to get the same treatment. The only concession given to them was they didn’t have to pull their underpants down like the boys. There were also days when he felt affectionate towards us. So one by one, we had to go and sit on his lap while he kissed our cheeks and moaned how much he loved us. I can’t figure out after years what felt worse. His love or his punishment. All I know is that for years I blocked out the memory of that painful year as the rest of my classmates must have. I changed my school in Class VIII and that too helped me to forget. But I know today if I came across him anywhere I will physically assault him. I wish him dead.
One thing that makes me absolutely furious is this soft pop psychology approach about how the abuser abuses because he has been abused himself as a child and needs counselling rather than punishment. It makes no sense whatsoever. Abuser are usually highly intelligent people who manage to prey on the victims by cleverly side stepping the boundaries and norms laid down by society. If they are devious enough to work through all that, they should work through their issues as well and ensure they are not contaminating others with their sickness.
There is a lot more that can be said about this subject. One of the first plays I wrote and directed, ‘Shadows on the Wall’ dealt with this subject and I remember how stressed the actors would get during rehearsals. It was an all women cast and I think they had to deal with their own set of painful memories. After all, all the women in this country have been abused in some way or the other; at the very least by a look or a touch or what passes off as ‘eve teasing.’
‘I am’ directed by Onir supposedly deals with this subject. His last film was a total rip off from an Almadover classic. I hope he has not borrowed this one from ‘Bad Education.’
Will let you know after watching the film next week.
I suspect just as we have more people than any other country, the instances of child sexual abuse are also that much more. I am sure our cities have more children living on the streets than anywhere else and they are preyed on constantly by the adults around them.
The most sheltered of environment is no deterrent for the pervert who picks on children as victims. Most families hide the shameful secret of a relative or friend who has messed around with their child or at least tried to. So imagine the fate of those children who don’t have anyone to look after them.
The plight of young boys is as bad if not worse than girls. We are always more careful about the girls in our family. There are greater restrictions around them. With boys, our conditioning is that they can manage. Even to acknowledge something like this can happen to them is difficult to accept for us. And most abuse victims tend to internalise the guilt of the abuser. They fall into the trap of believing it is their fault. With boys, this tends to happen much more. Men feel more ashamed to talk about themselves as victims. So the chances of the crime against young boys going undetected are much more.
We had this neighbour when I was a young and he pretended to be very fond of children. If he came across a group of us playing in the street outside, he would pick one of us and hug that child tightly and go on mumbling ‘should I bite your cheek.’ All of us felt uncomfortable with him but the entire neighbourhood thought of him as this guy who was really fond of children. If any adults were around, they would just laugh at our discomfiture. Then we had this class teacher in Class IV in the missionary school I went to. This was a co-educational school and his way of punishing us for not doing our homework was to make us turn our back to the class, force us to pull down our pants and briefs and deliver five or six blows on our bare butts with a ruler. The caning didn’t hurt as much as the humiliation.
The girls had to lift their skirts to get the same treatment. The only concession given to them was they didn’t have to pull their underpants down like the boys. There were also days when he felt affectionate towards us. So one by one, we had to go and sit on his lap while he kissed our cheeks and moaned how much he loved us. I can’t figure out after years what felt worse. His love or his punishment. All I know is that for years I blocked out the memory of that painful year as the rest of my classmates must have. I changed my school in Class VIII and that too helped me to forget. But I know today if I came across him anywhere I will physically assault him. I wish him dead.
One thing that makes me absolutely furious is this soft pop psychology approach about how the abuser abuses because he has been abused himself as a child and needs counselling rather than punishment. It makes no sense whatsoever. Abuser are usually highly intelligent people who manage to prey on the victims by cleverly side stepping the boundaries and norms laid down by society. If they are devious enough to work through all that, they should work through their issues as well and ensure they are not contaminating others with their sickness.
There is a lot more that can be said about this subject. One of the first plays I wrote and directed, ‘Shadows on the Wall’ dealt with this subject and I remember how stressed the actors would get during rehearsals. It was an all women cast and I think they had to deal with their own set of painful memories. After all, all the women in this country have been abused in some way or the other; at the very least by a look or a touch or what passes off as ‘eve teasing.’
‘I am’ directed by Onir supposedly deals with this subject. His last film was a total rip off from an Almadover classic. I hope he has not borrowed this one from ‘Bad Education.’
Will let you know after watching the film next week.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Barkha, Kapil and Anupam...and Anna too...
Some of my well meaning friends are posting youtube downloads on Facebook that show Barkha Dutt being ruthlessly heckled by a mob when she was at India Gate after the Anna Hazare victory. They are saddened by what they perceive to be a fascist outburst. My reaction to the entire episode is what’s the fuss all about? She deserved what she got.
Barkha Dutt is as much a symbol of the malaise of corruption as A Raja or Suresh Kalmadi is. If the defence pertaining to Dutt is that nothing has been proved against her and she was merely doing her job, then surely we can allow Suresh Kalmadi to get away too. The courts have not pronounced him guilty as yet. What if he had landed up at the site where Anna Hazare was fasting? I am sure the treatment meted out to him would have been a lot worse.
We, the English speaking elite of the country, tend to lose perspective when it comes to one of our own. Like in the case of Dutt. She went to a school just like ours. We can vouch for her middle class roots. That makes us feel like taking her side. We tell ourselves, at worst, she was guilty of social climbing. After all, the most ridiculous thing about us is that we take great pride not in who we are and what we have achieved but who we party with. The whole page 3 culture is about this phenomenon of name dropping. ‘You know I was standing close to so and so celebrity and could hear her fart. It smelt nice,’ kind of a thing. But the X tapes proved Dutt is guilty of far worse than just seeking a place next to Radia at a cocktail dinner. She played her part in foisting a corrupt minister on this country. She was a power broker after the last elections.
If she turns up at a venue where enraged citizens are celebrating their victory against corruption, what did she expect? Air kissing from the irate mob that had gathered there? If you show a red flag to a bull, it’ll chase you. You are lucky if it doesn’t gore you to death.
I am ready to believe anything about Nira Radia’s four a.m. friend. Including that she landed at the venue in order to first garner attention and later sympathy from us. I am sure the television channel that employs her has other reporters they could have sent to cover the event. Why did she have to go?
I am hoping no one is stupid enough to play the gender card here. Both Radia and Dutt look as if they can take on half a dozen men at a poker game and walk away smiling. That’s about the only thing I like about them. They are power women and I respect them for that. But since they have misused their power, they deserve to be treated badly by the citizens of this country just like a Raja or Kalmadi.
Somehow whenever I am on the topic of Barkha Dutt, I think of Kapil Sibal. Maybe because they look very comfortable together. The first time I noticed their chemistry was in one of those celebratory shows after the UPA government won the last elections. Dutt egged Sibal to recite one of his poems. It was a very bad poem. Neither did it rhyme nor did it have a deeper meaning. Kuch bakwas tha. But both of them looked very pleased at the end of Sibal’s recitation. Barkha more than Sibal. Like he had written it for her or something.
The next time I saw them together on a show was after the 2G scam broke out and brought to light the not to so insignificant part Dutt played in the entire shenanigan. I think she was under some kind of pressure to be tough with Sibal in order to protect her own image. But she couldn’t sustain the tempo with her poetry spouting pal who kept on looking adoringly at her whenever she shot a difficult question at him. Very different from the way he looks at Arnab Goswami.
So instead they started talking about how sensitive our honourable Prime Minister is. The expressions on their faces resembled that of the parents of a ten year old boy,when they are sharing with dinner guests their prodigy does not like cricket but plays the piano beautifully. The whole nonsense was very painful and manipulative.
Like that bald Anupam Kher in that Goswami show after Anna’s victory, correcting that activist lady about her body posture without realising he has one of the worst postures among the Bollywood hams. But that’s okay. Kher is paid to be a clown but Dutt and Sibal aren’t.
Anyway just as Dutt was heckled by Anna supporters, Sibal was heckled by Anna himself. When he decided to take the wind out of Anna’s victory by making pious statements about how the Jan Lok Pal bill is not going to help the cause of poverty or education, Anna told him to resign from the committee. Sibal ki to phat gayi. He forgot poetry and made all the right noises to toe Anna’s line. I think this Anna is rather clever. Almost as clever as Sonia Gandhi.
We should be a bit careful about him.
Barkha Dutt is as much a symbol of the malaise of corruption as A Raja or Suresh Kalmadi is. If the defence pertaining to Dutt is that nothing has been proved against her and she was merely doing her job, then surely we can allow Suresh Kalmadi to get away too. The courts have not pronounced him guilty as yet. What if he had landed up at the site where Anna Hazare was fasting? I am sure the treatment meted out to him would have been a lot worse.
We, the English speaking elite of the country, tend to lose perspective when it comes to one of our own. Like in the case of Dutt. She went to a school just like ours. We can vouch for her middle class roots. That makes us feel like taking her side. We tell ourselves, at worst, she was guilty of social climbing. After all, the most ridiculous thing about us is that we take great pride not in who we are and what we have achieved but who we party with. The whole page 3 culture is about this phenomenon of name dropping. ‘You know I was standing close to so and so celebrity and could hear her fart. It smelt nice,’ kind of a thing. But the X tapes proved Dutt is guilty of far worse than just seeking a place next to Radia at a cocktail dinner. She played her part in foisting a corrupt minister on this country. She was a power broker after the last elections.
If she turns up at a venue where enraged citizens are celebrating their victory against corruption, what did she expect? Air kissing from the irate mob that had gathered there? If you show a red flag to a bull, it’ll chase you. You are lucky if it doesn’t gore you to death.
I am ready to believe anything about Nira Radia’s four a.m. friend. Including that she landed at the venue in order to first garner attention and later sympathy from us. I am sure the television channel that employs her has other reporters they could have sent to cover the event. Why did she have to go?
I am hoping no one is stupid enough to play the gender card here. Both Radia and Dutt look as if they can take on half a dozen men at a poker game and walk away smiling. That’s about the only thing I like about them. They are power women and I respect them for that. But since they have misused their power, they deserve to be treated badly by the citizens of this country just like a Raja or Kalmadi.
Somehow whenever I am on the topic of Barkha Dutt, I think of Kapil Sibal. Maybe because they look very comfortable together. The first time I noticed their chemistry was in one of those celebratory shows after the UPA government won the last elections. Dutt egged Sibal to recite one of his poems. It was a very bad poem. Neither did it rhyme nor did it have a deeper meaning. Kuch bakwas tha. But both of them looked very pleased at the end of Sibal’s recitation. Barkha more than Sibal. Like he had written it for her or something.
The next time I saw them together on a show was after the 2G scam broke out and brought to light the not to so insignificant part Dutt played in the entire shenanigan. I think she was under some kind of pressure to be tough with Sibal in order to protect her own image. But she couldn’t sustain the tempo with her poetry spouting pal who kept on looking adoringly at her whenever she shot a difficult question at him. Very different from the way he looks at Arnab Goswami.
So instead they started talking about how sensitive our honourable Prime Minister is. The expressions on their faces resembled that of the parents of a ten year old boy,when they are sharing with dinner guests their prodigy does not like cricket but plays the piano beautifully. The whole nonsense was very painful and manipulative.
Like that bald Anupam Kher in that Goswami show after Anna’s victory, correcting that activist lady about her body posture without realising he has one of the worst postures among the Bollywood hams. But that’s okay. Kher is paid to be a clown but Dutt and Sibal aren’t.
Anyway just as Dutt was heckled by Anna supporters, Sibal was heckled by Anna himself. When he decided to take the wind out of Anna’s victory by making pious statements about how the Jan Lok Pal bill is not going to help the cause of poverty or education, Anna told him to resign from the committee. Sibal ki to phat gayi. He forgot poetry and made all the right noises to toe Anna’s line. I think this Anna is rather clever. Almost as clever as Sonia Gandhi.
We should be a bit careful about him.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Make Anna Redundant...Seek the Leader Within
Time for stock taking, now that the euphoria is over. Been reading the different perspectives on the movement. There are plenty of dissenting voices and there are some valid arguments being put forth by those who oppose Anna Hazare and mock those who supposedly got carried away.
One myth I would straight away like to bunk is that all the protesters look at Anna Hazare as some kind of messiah to deliver the nation from corruption. I for one don’t. And a number of people I have been talking to, feel the same. Anna is clearly the man of the moment and helped us mobilise our anger and rage against a corrupt government. His action of fasting at the capital to draw attention to the menace and malaise of corruption was inspirational. But I will draw the line at saying I am inspired by the man.
If he is endorsing Narendra Modi’s model of development, then Anna is clearly fallible. Modi’s actions post Godhra revealed corruption of the worst kind. Corruption is not just about money, it’s about misuse of power and a chief minister who was complicit in a state sponsored genocide can’t be resurrected however forward thinking his actions are, post his misdemeanours. Until he serves time for his crimes just like Raja and Kalmadi ought to.
Anna himself has been at the receiving end of state terror and it’s a bit silly of him to label what happened in Gujarat in 2002 as ‘communal disharmony.’ It was more like communal carnage. He should have a dialogue with Mallika Sarabhai, one of his biggest supporters, on this. And maybe also check with Nitish Kumar about how Kumar feels about being bracketed with Modi on the issue of rural development. The Bihar chief minister abhors his counterpart from Gujarat like most ‘civil’ Indians of the ‘civil society’ do.
Coming back to the more pertinent issue, does Anna having his own pair of feet of clay devastate me or make me feel silly for having supported him...no it doesn’t. My support for him was over a particular issue, at a particular moment. It is not for all times and over all issues. I endorsed his stance and his actions because I was fed up of being taken for granted by this government and I wanted to remind the people in power, we hold the reins in a democracy. Now that the message has reached those who it was intended for, I would like to go back to playing it by the rules and respecting the constitution. I am not an anarchist for all times.
I will be disappointed of course if Anna turns out to be another Manmohan Singh. But I don’t think it would pose a hurdle to my own set of commitments regarding corruption. Nor should it hamper anyone else who’s in the same boat as me.
The true victory is always about finding the leader within you. And all of us have a dormant one within with a set of unique values and beliefs.
It’s time to evoke that leader and persist. Let's make Anna redundant now.
One myth I would straight away like to bunk is that all the protesters look at Anna Hazare as some kind of messiah to deliver the nation from corruption. I for one don’t. And a number of people I have been talking to, feel the same. Anna is clearly the man of the moment and helped us mobilise our anger and rage against a corrupt government. His action of fasting at the capital to draw attention to the menace and malaise of corruption was inspirational. But I will draw the line at saying I am inspired by the man.
If he is endorsing Narendra Modi’s model of development, then Anna is clearly fallible. Modi’s actions post Godhra revealed corruption of the worst kind. Corruption is not just about money, it’s about misuse of power and a chief minister who was complicit in a state sponsored genocide can’t be resurrected however forward thinking his actions are, post his misdemeanours. Until he serves time for his crimes just like Raja and Kalmadi ought to.
Anna himself has been at the receiving end of state terror and it’s a bit silly of him to label what happened in Gujarat in 2002 as ‘communal disharmony.’ It was more like communal carnage. He should have a dialogue with Mallika Sarabhai, one of his biggest supporters, on this. And maybe also check with Nitish Kumar about how Kumar feels about being bracketed with Modi on the issue of rural development. The Bihar chief minister abhors his counterpart from Gujarat like most ‘civil’ Indians of the ‘civil society’ do.
Coming back to the more pertinent issue, does Anna having his own pair of feet of clay devastate me or make me feel silly for having supported him...no it doesn’t. My support for him was over a particular issue, at a particular moment. It is not for all times and over all issues. I endorsed his stance and his actions because I was fed up of being taken for granted by this government and I wanted to remind the people in power, we hold the reins in a democracy. Now that the message has reached those who it was intended for, I would like to go back to playing it by the rules and respecting the constitution. I am not an anarchist for all times.
I will be disappointed of course if Anna turns out to be another Manmohan Singh. But I don’t think it would pose a hurdle to my own set of commitments regarding corruption. Nor should it hamper anyone else who’s in the same boat as me.
The true victory is always about finding the leader within you. And all of us have a dormant one within with a set of unique values and beliefs.
It’s time to evoke that leader and persist. Let's make Anna redundant now.
Saturday, April 9, 2011
How Anna transformed Yeddyurappa, Sushma Swaraj and Narayana Murthy
Anna’s revolution has not only galvanised the common man, it has also transformed some very powerful individuals in the country.
The chief minister of Karnataka Yeddyurappa who so far has been reeling under one charge of corruption after another has decided to turn into a new leaf. He is currently drawing up a list of all the assets he and his family have acquired including the land they have grabbed. Once the exercise is over, he plans to return all the ill gotten wealth to the state. And that’s not the end of it. He also plans to give up the chair of the chief minister that he has been clinging desperately to for so many months now despite the opposition from his own party. He has decided to spend the rest of his life emulating the Gandhian Hazare and leading a frugal existence. He is giving up his obsession about cricket and cricketers. Instead he will plant a million saplings across the state to raise awareness about environmental degradation.
How do I know all this? Arrey baba, If he wasn’t planning to do all this, why will he come out publicly in support of Anna Hazare? No one can be that out of touch with reality.
The leader of opposition Sushma Swaraj has also turned into a new leaf. You remember how way back in 2005, she had threatened to shave her head if Sonia Gandhi became the prime minister. Well Sonia didn’t...and Sushma lost her chance to shave her head. But now she is determined to get her mundan done as a mark of protest against all the illegal mining activities of the Reddy brothers. She is no longer interested in patronising them. She has realized how wrong she was in supporting the brothers.
How do I know all this? Arrey baba, if she wasn’t planning to do her mundan, why will she come out publicly in support of Anna Hazare and also talk about an all party meet to combat corruption. No one can be that duplicitous.
The chairman of Infosys, N R Narayana Murthy, has asked his leadership team to draw up a list of the land his organization has acquired in Karnataka, Andra Pradesh and various other Indian states by demanding it from the respective governments. He raised the pertinent question about how much land does an IT organization need for running the business. “Surely not hundreds of acres,” he thundered in a specially convened board meeting. His wife Sudha Murthy who is a board member was present in the meeting. She also chipped in by saying “We must be wise...not otherwise.” Mr Narayana Murthy also pledged that Infosys will go back to its initial vision of creating wealth for all its employees and to this end he and his family members would personally distribute more than 70% of the equity they hold to the employees of the organization or liquidate the shares to build more schools, roads and other infrastructure facilities in the cities where Infosys has offices.
How do I know all this? Arrey baba, if he wasn’t ready to put his money where his mouth is as most businessmen and industrialists are fond of saying, why will he come out in support of Anna Hazare and his crusade against corruption? No one can be that contradictory.
Now all we need to do from our side is to find out what time frame have all these worthy leaders set for achieving these personal milestones.
I am keenly awaiting their next set of public declarations. Are you?
The chief minister of Karnataka Yeddyurappa who so far has been reeling under one charge of corruption after another has decided to turn into a new leaf. He is currently drawing up a list of all the assets he and his family have acquired including the land they have grabbed. Once the exercise is over, he plans to return all the ill gotten wealth to the state. And that’s not the end of it. He also plans to give up the chair of the chief minister that he has been clinging desperately to for so many months now despite the opposition from his own party. He has decided to spend the rest of his life emulating the Gandhian Hazare and leading a frugal existence. He is giving up his obsession about cricket and cricketers. Instead he will plant a million saplings across the state to raise awareness about environmental degradation.
How do I know all this? Arrey baba, If he wasn’t planning to do all this, why will he come out publicly in support of Anna Hazare? No one can be that out of touch with reality.
The leader of opposition Sushma Swaraj has also turned into a new leaf. You remember how way back in 2005, she had threatened to shave her head if Sonia Gandhi became the prime minister. Well Sonia didn’t...and Sushma lost her chance to shave her head. But now she is determined to get her mundan done as a mark of protest against all the illegal mining activities of the Reddy brothers. She is no longer interested in patronising them. She has realized how wrong she was in supporting the brothers.
How do I know all this? Arrey baba, if she wasn’t planning to do her mundan, why will she come out publicly in support of Anna Hazare and also talk about an all party meet to combat corruption. No one can be that duplicitous.
The chairman of Infosys, N R Narayana Murthy, has asked his leadership team to draw up a list of the land his organization has acquired in Karnataka, Andra Pradesh and various other Indian states by demanding it from the respective governments. He raised the pertinent question about how much land does an IT organization need for running the business. “Surely not hundreds of acres,” he thundered in a specially convened board meeting. His wife Sudha Murthy who is a board member was present in the meeting. She also chipped in by saying “We must be wise...not otherwise.” Mr Narayana Murthy also pledged that Infosys will go back to its initial vision of creating wealth for all its employees and to this end he and his family members would personally distribute more than 70% of the equity they hold to the employees of the organization or liquidate the shares to build more schools, roads and other infrastructure facilities in the cities where Infosys has offices.
How do I know all this? Arrey baba, if he wasn’t ready to put his money where his mouth is as most businessmen and industrialists are fond of saying, why will he come out in support of Anna Hazare and his crusade against corruption? No one can be that contradictory.
Now all we need to do from our side is to find out what time frame have all these worthy leaders set for achieving these personal milestones.
I am keenly awaiting their next set of public declarations. Are you?
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