Divine Coorg

If you live in Bangalore, there is no dearth of hill stations within easy driving distance. There is Ooty and Coonoor, there in Wayanad, there is Masanagudi and then there are places in Coorg from Kushalnagar to Madikeri. Coorg has something very untamed about it. It has not yet been corrupted to the extent Ooty and Coonoor have been by the tourists. Not that they aren't trying. The towns in Coorg abound with homestays and resorts. I am writing this from a resort in Coorg so I guess I am as much to be blamed as the rest of them.

I love the room we are in. It is surrounded by trees giving the impression that we are in the middle of a forest. We have a day left here and it seems the visit was all too short.

I am sure sooner than later, we will have some kind of a home in Coorg. And I will also build a writing and theatre residency here.

If wishes were horses...

Columns and Sikhs

I usually write a column a week. I treat it as work. A certain number of words have to be belted out and I usually rotate between four broad topics- Books, Films, Politics and what I like to loosely refer to as “General Stuff.” It’s another way of making the writing pay. For the materialistic approach I have towards writing columns, the response to my recent one on Sikhs has come as a pleasant surprise. The column was written for a Bangalore publication but appreciative feedback has flowed in from places as distant as North America and Europe.

It has taught me two things. Technology breaks all kinds of barriers including that of time and space. I decide on paying good money to watch a Hollywood film in a multiplex based on the review by Roger Ebert that appears in Chicago Sun Times. So why should it be surprising that Sikhs in other parts of the world have read what I have to say about them and commented.

The other thing I have learnt is I was right about the community. Sikhs are generous, spontaneous folks quick to forget unnecessary slights. One gentleman wrote he has forgiven all those who made fun of him in school after reading my column. That made my day.

http://www.bangaloremirror.com/index.aspx?page=article§id=36&contentid=2010031020100310193156415fd301a73

Evil Summer

I think of global warming only during this part of the year. Bangalore gets to be unbearably hot in these two or three months. It’s not the temperature. I am sure there are other cities in this country that beat us hands down but something about encountering the relentless sun in our otherwise pleasant city, day after day, is an unwelcome paradox to live with. Maybe it’s the low humidity but that’s like saying Chennai has pleasant weather because of the sweating that comes with the heat.

A couple of years ago I met these folks from Amritsar who were visiting Bangalore during March. I started complaining to them about the heat. They were quite offended. “Amritsar touches 47 degrees,” they complained in an injured voice. “Sure, Bangalore just feels like it’s touching 47 right now,” I said brightly. But they weren’t appeased and didn’t speak to me for the rest of the evening.

When I can’t bear the heat, I think of all the cold places I have been to. I was in Kent in February one year and the town had snowfall for the first time in ten years. I loved the snow. One evening I walked to the store to stock some food and on my way back slipped and fell on the snow that was turning into ice. It hurt a lot and for some time I couldn’t get up but the thought of dying in the cold was bearable.

Unlike the time I was in NID, Ahmedabad as part of their interview panel for the selection of students immediately after the Gujarat riots. I was told about all the folks who were burnt alive by other members in the panel. I couldn’t sleep for weeks after that visit. I would dream that a mob had set me on fire and wake up sweating. I just couldn’t figure out how anyone could commit such an act of bestiality on other human beings. Especially in a place like Ahmedabad that can be unbearably hot during summers.

Summer for me is a reminder of all things evil like riots and mobs turning into animals.

Hosting Parties

On an impulse I decided to host a lunch for friends. Holi provided the excuse. So the last two days were spent on cooking and cleaning the kitchen afterwards. Cooking is a bipolar pleasure. It’s fun to rustle up dishes and get praised for your culinary talents. It’s always a pain to clean up afterwards. So invariably you end up falling back on the good old domestic help to wash, dry, swab and clear all the mess afterwards. Something that ought to make you feel good for making your friends happy ends up making you feel guilty instead.

We Indians are a spoilt lot. We have cooks, drivers, part time helps to slave for us. But once we migrate to lands that frown on such indulgences we do all these chores in addition to mowing the lawn. The first time I went to US was on a corporate assignment. The chairman of the organization accompanied me to my farewell party when it was time to leave. He came to fetch me in his limousine, driving the car himself. It took me a long time to get over that shock.

I suppose we got the maids and chambermaids as a legacy from our feudal past and the British validated our exploitative ways. But it is anathema in England to employ servants anymore. So if they could give up their unpleasant ways, we should be following suit soon.

I guess that would be the end of the impromptu parties I host for friends.

Theatre Addiction

While working with a group of adolescents on a school theatre project, one of the students who comes from an artistic lineage gurgled happily “Theatre is a nasha. Once you are addicted, you are finished.”

That’s true. For over two years now, our theatre group has been lying dormant but I have been getting my fix from working in educational institutions. I help out in my son’s school with a couple of productions every year. And I am also called upon to do a course on theatre and management by the premier management institute in India which culminates with the students writing scripts and staging plays as an end term requirement.

Both the experiences have been extremely gratifying this year. The school production had Class XI students, a bunch of hyper active, intelligent and talented brats. They brought with them an acute perception of adult follies and were forever testing the facilitators. But in the last three days, they were magically transformed and put up a scintillating show. They staged their play almost a month ago but I still wake up on certain mornings missing the bachhas and missing the rehearsals.

Surprisingly, the management class was not very different. They too brought in energy as well as scepticism when we started. They too made it clear that they didn’t have unconditional respect to offer. Needless to add, they too kept their blossoming for the last minute. And to put an end to the familiar story, they too put up a great show for their final performance even though they were weighed down by work pressures, end term exams and the placement season.

There is something akin to magic in theatre. It transforms individuals from within and without. I plan to do a couple of plays for the public this year.
The addiction is back.

Cozy Delights

Just love them. Starting with Agatha Christie.
I finished reading all her books sometimes in the 80’s. And then I chanced upon Ruth Rendell and P D James. That’s when I figured there is some serious, mind blowing fiction here so what if it is genre.

Innocent Blood by PD James can easily qualify as a literary work. There are so many layers to the novel. Then there are all those books by Rendell written under her pseudonym Barbara Vine. My favourites among them are A Dark Adapted Eye, The Chimney Sweeper’s Boy, Gallowglass, A Fatal Inversion…all of them actually, including the latest The Birthday Party.

I am such an avid fan of James and Rendell that I track when they are releasing their new cozy and start hounding the local book shops as soon as it is published in UK. The problem is it takes at least six months for the Indian editions to be out and that’s always a bitch. Sometimes understanding friends who live or are travelling there, oblige.

Inspector Morse used to be a personal hero and then Colin Dexter decided to do away with him. But BBC is ingenious enough to carry with his sidekick Lewis. I was thrilled when I discovered the DVD’s of the Lewis series in The British Library.

I also have to thank the library for helping me to shed my ambivalence towards Reginald Hill and his two detectives Dalziel and Pascoe. For some reason I was never sold on Hill as an author. Until I started watching their DVDs that the library stocks! Now I have added Hill and his obnoxious Dalziel to my list of favourite cozies.

The latest discovery is Elizabeth George. She’s an American but her books are set in England. I used to think of her as a lesser writer. Sometime back I picked up a book of hers called What Came before He Shot Her. I was expecting the usual page turner and end up discovering this gem that is in the same league as A Dark Adapted Eye and Innocent Blood.

Some interests always take you to a circle. You begin from where you thought it ended.

Writers and Writing

“They don’t get someone like you,” said my editor. She was referring to the fraternity of Indian writers. I suspect some of them had heaped scorn on my non literary pretensions in her presence. We were in the hub and din of the Delhi Book Fair and I am not quite sure whether what she said was intended to be a compliment.

I think she was slightly annoyed at my enthusiasm. I was unable to conceal my glee at the invitation from my publishers to spend a couple of days in the capital just browsing in the country’s largest book fair and luxuriating in five star comfort afterwards. I have been hosted enough and more times by organizations in my role as a consultant and coach. But that’s because they want me to do some work for them.

To be hosted as a writer without any agenda felt really good. Almost as good as fraternising with 30 writers from all over the world in the International Writers Program at Iowa. Or bagging two prestigious residencies in Kent and Pittsburgh in the span of two years. For a non literary writer, I am doing fine. Thank You.

To gloat further, a German scholar wrote to me recently asking for permission to reproduce one of my essays published in a newspaper in her academic compilation on Indian Writing in English. It is the same essay that had drawn the ire of a couple of “Establishment Writers” in India when it was published.

A week later I had lunch in Bangalore with a writer from UK who I had met in the Delhi trip and she told me she always turned down invitations to literary meets in her own country because of all the grandiose egos parading around. I don’t quite remember what she said exactly but there seemed to be gentle affirmation about the way I had turned out to be.

I guess the pompous affectations are not restricted to Indian writers. World over they believe in conforming to a certain type. With notable exceptions like Zadie Smith who was one of the first to champion publicly it’s not an either/or. You can be a writer and a decent human being.

Writers have attitude and say clever, cruel things to others in public dinners. I prefer to restrict the cruelty to my writing.
When I am not writing, I like to make friends and cook for them. I go to my son’s school sometimes and help out with theatre related activities. I also sleep a lot.

Writers are supercilious and prone to make lofty statements like “I am not my writing.”
I wonder what I will be without the writing.

Most writers turn silly after some public acknowledgement for their work has happened.
I am silly enough to see through that trap.