The Sleeping Pill Called Jabulani?

25 goals in 16 matches – a shade over 1.5 goals per match. That’s how South Africa 2010 started off, and all those of us who were eagerly waiting for our final semester engineer exams to get over just a couple of days before the action kicked off in Soccer City didn’t know exactly how to react.

Tshabalala did the shakalaka for the hosts South Africa against the run of play in the opening match against Mexico, but what followed in the next 5 days was disappointing to say the least. 12 of them were low scoring affairs (0-0, 1-0 or 1-1) even though only one was goalless. The Koreans were on the receiving end in 2 of the remaining 4 – the South lost 2-0 to Greece; the North defended hard against perennial favourites Brazil but were unable to avert a 2-1 loss. The Dutch were expected to scintillate but were only able to do so on a select few occasions, more so in the second period of their opener against the Danes and ended up being 2-0 victors.

The highlights? Goal-to-goal periods in 3 of the 4 one-all draws; watching Messi, Tevez & Co. waiting to explode in the first period vs. Nigeria; the enthralling array of through passes and defence-splitting runs that the multi-ethnic and mostly young German bunch (Oezil and Muller are names that immediately spring to mind) came up with to rip apart the Socceroos 4-0. But was that because those guys were used to what everyone else was having a problem with? Jabulani, the official match ball, was tried out in Angola during the 2010 ANC as well as in the national leagues of USA and Argentina and also – it was alleged – Germany.

The skills on display were way below par, especially given the level of expectations of viewers fed on a diet of professional European leagues, and much of the blame was heaped upon the Jabulani. Its weight, shape, dimension, materials, structure, etc. all came in for criticism every time a direct free kick or a long distance shot went high over the crossbar, a corner got carried over the head of everybody in the penalty area and a long ball bounced right in front of the potential recipient, right over his head and out for a throw-in or a goal kick. England‘s Green and Algeria‘s Chaouchi, however, will tell you – and TV audiences the world over will agree – that no one suffered like the goalkeepers did. The former’s mistake cost his team 2 points and him a place in the side; the latter’s error meant that the African outsiders no longer had even that outside chance at making it into the knockouts.

Soon, though, the players settled down and adjusted themselves to the cold playing conditions, varying altitudes and a ball that seemingly had a mind of its own, and the results started undergoing a sea change. It all started with the last match of the first set of matches. Up next – shock & draw.

Breaking News – Cheataly Booted Out!

Immediately after the Azzurri scored the first of their futile goals, two of the Italians homed in on the goalkeeper while he was retrieving the ball from inside the goal, brought him down and stamped on him when no one was looking. One of them left the crime scene while the other hung around so that the referee could return just in time to see the Slovak goalie and a defender retaliate. The official heard the Italian’s complaints and decided that the ‘keeper deserved to be booked – both the stamping Italian goons, needless to say, escaped unscathed. But that was not the first such incident in this match – in the first period, minutes after Cannavaro had escaped a second booking, he came up with a Tony Award winning performance after the slightest touch from the Slovak goalscorer Vittek just to ensure that the latter got booked.

Anyone who has seen Italy play over the ages knows that this behaviour wasn’t in the least bit abnormal – that’s how they play. Supporters would like to say it’s smart aggression – but anyone who’s not wearing savoy-blue-tinted glasses knows that it’s smart cheating. Rivaldo against Turkey in 2002 was one guy – every time Italy plays, there are 11 such Rivaldos on the field and many more in the dugout. In spite of having the finest strikers over the ages, even in the recent years (Baggio, Del Piero, Inzaghi, Totti and Vieri are names that immediately spring to mind), all they ever did – no matter who the coach was – was get that one goal, stifle every attack which tried to fetch the equalizer, and try and increase the lead on the counter. Opposition on a break? Feign injury and force the referee to hold up play. Injure the opponent’s playmaker through hideous tackles and fouls when the officials are caught up with something else; get as many of their players booked as possible (sending offs are always a bonus).

Sadly for them, their fame defence lacked both the legs and the heart this time – and thank the heavens for that, ‘coz otherwise it would have been another victory for cheating over ethics and honesty, for evil over good. Lucas Neill, Zinedine Zidane and a host of others from Germany 2006 must be experiencing a sweet sensation now, for the Azzurri got their just desserts, main course as well as starters.

Killjoy

Never mind the fact that I am making use of it to put this article up for all to see – when it comes to technology and in particular the internet, I am all for Mulayam Singh and his Samajwadi Party. And while I do have serious issues that bother me, what I am presently concerned about is how the World Wide Web has consigned most of my fond childhood memories to the distant past.

Chandralok Building. Janpath, nr. CP (Connaught Place for the uninitiated). Almost every summer vacations when an outstation trip was considered, the very first journey was in bus route no. 620 (or, in the later years, 604) from Malai Mandir to Regal followed by a walk to that building which was (and still is, I hope) home to the tourist departments of almost each and every state of India, right in the heart of New Delhi. So we would walk into the tourist offices of the probable destination states, pick up a bunch of tourist brochures (I have always loved collecting those and have a proud collection stashed away somewhere in my cupboard) and head back home. After about a week of deliberating, we would go back to make the bookings. Those guys would do something on their “system” and hand us some pieces of paper after the successful completion of the transaction.

Of course, such touristy trips were not as regular as the mandatory visit to the maternal grandparents’ which happened, without fail, annually – either during the session break in March or the longer summer vacations in May-June (people not from the North might not get this but we used to get TWO breaks – one, a short 15-day one between standards, and two, a long one after less than one month of the commencement of the new session). Being the train maniac that I still am (won’t get started here on that otherwise there is no end to this post), the excitement began with a trip to the booking office. Even though the Sarojini Nagar one was closer, I personally preferred IRCA on Chelmsford Rd, the CP radial road that led to the Pahar Ganj side of the New Delhi Rly Stn. The two major bonuses – a glimpse of trains entering the station after having just crossed the Minto (now, Shivaji) Bridge, and the HPMC outlet that sold awesome apple juice.

But it is not just about travelling. Earlier, there was a certain amount of respect accorded to a person who was a known authority on a certain topic. General knowledge, trivia, facts and figures – call ‘em what you will, I have always been in love with ‘em. Other than the Britannica, World Book and the Manorama Yearbook to an extent, there were no standard sources of information that one could rely on, so people like me spent hours in front of the TV watching all types of quiz shows right from BQC to Brand Equity and Mastermind to University Challenge, actually read the newspaper and magazines and cut out interesting snippets to be filed at a later date (that later date never came) and rely upon other random, unverifiable sources such as single-volume encyclopedias and GK handbooks released by local publishers. Another proud item in my collection is a bunch of HT “factoid” cuttings that my mother religiously cut out and collected for me over the years.

Knowing stuff helped boost one’s ego when one could answer questions asked on those TV quiz shows, and occasionally win quiz contests that appeared in the papers. But all that seemingly useless information found its best outlet in a classroom quiz-based game show that I used to organize whenever some teacher was absent and the substitute either didn’t show up or weren’t interested in teaching. It was called Hit The Jackpot – you were required to score a minimum number of points in order to be declared the imaginary winner of a bunch of items that me and many others thought were desirable back then. It started off as a “knee-jerk reaction” (how I love using those terms that the media plants in our brains every time there’s a tragedy) to KBC, but it, I can proudly say, matured enough to have a life of its own. Someone please remind me to dedicate a separate full-length post to this sometime later.

That was then. The Internet may have existed but it found its way into my life only recently. Now, every time I have to write something, I create a new post here on Blogger – I have grown so used to this that I just can’t write anywhere else, let alone using pen and paper, and I just need to verify even the smallest fact using the Net. Knowledge-based contests are no longer fun to take part in – as it is, there are hardly any of those left. Their organizers know that no answer cannot be found, so now it is all about speed (early birds catch the worm), luck (winners shall be randomly selected using a draw of lots) and creativity (express an idea in less than 20 words). And every second person is an expert – more so because our conversations are more through chats than in person, so there’s ample time for the ignorant to feign smartness using the other tab. After all, information is just a smart search string away.

But I still refuse to use IRCTC or any of those private travel websites (MMT, Cleartrip, etc) to book my tickets esp. railway ones. I do use those sites to check my options (jotting down addresses, phone numbers and other details of every possible accommodation option when you are travelling sort of helps offset the risk you are taking by not making advance bookings) but when it comes to the actual booking bit, I find myself going over to the nearest booking counter, sweating it out in the queues which remain serpentine even after all these years, filling out multiple reservation forms while I am advancing at less than a snail’s pace in those queues and finally laying my hands on the much-coveted printed train ticket.

PS. Thanks Purba Ray for this post which motivated me to write this.

Unimaginative Title #1 – World Cup

I have been wanting to write something about the World Cup for a long time, but wasn’t sure about the angle. I still am not, so I’ll try and incorporate some of the angles I’ve been toying with.

It’s not that I’m against people who have all of a sudden woken up to the fact that there exists a sport called football which is otherwise known as the most popular game on earth. In fact, it’s good that every single person that I know is pretending to watch every single match and following that show up with a barrage of match updates on Facebook, Twitter, etc., most of them complete with scorelines, goal scorers, missed chances, yellow cards, red cards and all other possible highlights. With these details being splashed over and over again on my FB news feed, Twitter timeline, etc., sometimes I feel whether keeping my eyes glued on the TV screen is really worth it. Luckily, I’ve been able to overcome those rare moments of weakness.

But it’s not just the posts – a lot about this age of the information media and the internet has taken the joy out of many such events that used to be a periodic mainstay in my life till about 6 years back. I barely remember the first ever World Cup I saw on TV – all that I can recollect is being introduced to the term “deferred live” thanks to Doordarshan, other of course than Baggio’s missed penalty. But I do have a relic from back then – an amazingly detailed supplement that came with The Statesman that I still refer to for some odd reason. I’ll give the earliest major sporting tournament that I very distinctly recall (1996 Wills World Cup) a pass here, and stick to the beautiful game. Euro 96 brought me great joy – my favourite team till date (courtesy of being my favourite non-Indian country back then) won it thanks to “Golden Boy” Bierhoff, but it was only after that tournament that I got my hands on a pre-tournament book featuring potential superstars with loads of interesting tidbits on each.

Next came the only World Cup whose each and every match I watched religiously no matter how late in the night some of them finished (these, incidentally, were also my first bunch of real late-nighters). The four-page newspaper supplement still exists. fave team crashed out in the quarters – an ageing squad was blamed, so on the day of the final, I decided to back the hosts; using sketch pens, made paper flags and shredded paper to make confetti. The hosts won, but more importantly for me, Brazil stayed just one ahead. Euro 2000 was probably the first time that I realized that this continental tournament featured better teams than on the global stage – the first round exit of my team was all the proof that I needed. Relics of this tournament include newspaper clippings (Needless to say I am not mentioning the default relics that include Sportstar special sections and posters, and World Cup special issues of other magazines).

Till then, no one else was interested. Everything changed with Korea-Japan 2002 though. Live coverage on TV was at a very convenient time – I managed in spite of the FIITJEE classes that I’d just joined back then. My team had a dream start, but thereafter resorted to a strategy used to perfection by Greece just a couple of years later and were clearly the 2nd best team in the final and in the tournament. After the 02 WC, even more comprehensive coverage of European leagues esp. EPL started on ESPN-Star, and before you knew it, everyone was either a Man-U or an Arsenal fan. Euro 2004 was the last major football tournament I saw – Greece’s “defend-for-85-minutes-then-head-one-in” tactics coupled with college admissions made sure that it wasn’t a memorable one. Just a couple of months after that, vanvaas began.

For almost six whole years, I went without a TV (except for a brief period that was the 2006 World Cup which was when I had an external TV tuner card that actually worked) and it is during this time that most people around me took to the game. Some of them really amaze me with their all-round knowledge of the game, and not just in terms of facts – these guys can actually offer their own expert opinions both before and after every match. True Indians, I tell you. The problem with this bunch is that they tend to scoff at the mere mention of the word ‘tradition’. But when it comes to the football World Cup, tradition does play a part whether they like it or not.

Patterns are a maybe (So France this time repeated their 2002 performance in a near-identical fashion, but there’s no guarantee that Spain will be knocked out in the first round like they were back in 98, or that Argentina will win it a la 86), but you can more often than not rest assured that certain teams from certain parts of the world will raise their game on the biggest stage of ‘em all, while many players who are superstars in the club world will come up a cropper when in their national colours. So all your knowledge of the European leagues might not give you an edge when it comes to accuracy of predictions. My very first WC threw up a predictable winner; the first WC that I properly followed resulted in an entirely new team winning. So while chances that a team other than one of the seven that has won the Cup at least once is going to win it are slim, if a team like Spain wins it, I’ll be as happy as the next wannabe (oh yes, I love them – I even named my blog persona after them).

I still occasionally wear the Adidas T-shirt that I got as a prize for winning some sports quiz that appeared in a newspaper. I still remember my father’s reaction after Bergkamp trapped the long ball and converted it to ensure a Dutch victory over the Argentines which was, compared to the ’78 WC final loss, a mere consolation. The bloody awesome book that was given to me for winning a Durga Pujo quiz at my neighbourhood temple (thanks mainly to the clean sweep of the sports round) is a proud item in my personal collection; the Milo watch that I got for winning the ESPN School Quiz North Zone Quarter Final beating Doon School Dehradun by a huge margin is one of the many in my dysfunctional watches collection.

I have been out of touch for long but sports, hello again. Thank you World Cup.

PS. About this ongoing WC, tomorrow. Pakka.

For The Love Of Games

The sealing drive ahead of the Commonwealth Games may end up successfully removing eyesores and thereby beautifying all the monument complexes and other places of tourist interest in the national capital region for the benefit of the multitudes of foreign tourists expected in about 4 months’ time, but it is definitely robbing the local visitors of what are usually the only spots to have a breather and with it, a quick snack and something to drink. Sure, they shall be replaced by a swanky eatery that’s more hygienic and, more importantly, authorized but any such place, needless to say, shall be hideously expensive and way out of reach of the lone local loiterers – case in point: the restaurant outside the Qutab Minar complex.

Here’s a look at the place which let a parched me buy bottles of water and Nimbooz during a tiring, mid-summer evening trip to Purana Qila last year:

That was then. This is now. Came across the photograph which you’ll see if you click on the link (and make sure you do, otherwise this post is wasted) in today’s HT and was, well, unpleasantly surprised. Ah well, it’s all for the love of (the CW) Games I suppose.

Raavan

I have absolutely no idea what the equation between Mani Ratnam and Prakash Jha is, but from what I just witnessed on screen, I am guessing cordial is not the correct word. If it were, Mani could have, would have and should have sought help as soon as he decided to use an epic in a modern-day political scenario (needless to say, help with writing a script involving politics should have been sought at least a decade ago). Maybe it’s ego associated with being rich and famous, maybe it’s not – the fact is that Mr. Ratnam seemed to think that Ramayana is all about Ram‘s wife Sita being kidnapped by Ravana who viewed it as vengeance for the treatment meted out by Ram’s brother Lakshman upon Ravana’s sister Surpanakha, and the ultimate victory of good-over-evil – with due help from Hanuman of course.

Even if one digs deep inside and forgives him for the shallow adaptation of Ramayana, when one considers the depiction of the socio-political situation, well, compared to this Yuva was a spitting image of the scenario in our country today – and that, I am sorry to say, is unforgivable, at least in my books. But maybe you are a saint who can look beyond everything, forgive, forget, leave your brains back at home, suspend disbelief and enjoy an utterly unrealistic, totally escapist (but in the cerebral garb) cinematic experience. Here’s the gist – SP Dev Sharma (Vikram/”Ram”) was sent to Lal Maati to take out the Naxalesque Beera (Abhi/”Ravan”), and now has an added personal incentive, since his wife Ragini (Ash/”Sita”) has been kidnapped. Aiding Dev are Sanjivni (Govinda/”Hanuman”) and “Laxman” (Nikhil Dwivedi), while Beera has, among others, Ravi Kissen on his team.

So then, the big question – what’s in it for you? Acting, you ask? What if I say that Ravi Kissen and Govinda shine like beacons? You refuse to believe what you just read, right? Well, brace yourselves ‘coz it’s true. And as far as the leads go, the less said the better. Ash is her usual shrieky self (the only difference being that at times she manages to look and behave like that creature from The Ring). Vikram is your usual bash-em-up Southie, I am guessing, superstar but thankfully with not much of an accent. And for those of you who were hoping for a Abhi-Mani hattrick, well, there’s news for you – AB Jr. does an excellent job of paying a tribute to his dad. So, like his father does 9/10 times he’s given a remotely challenging role, he overdoes it. And what’s more, his character, the jungle lord Beera (who was more Veerappan than Robin Hood) is a coarse blend of Auro from Paa and Babban from RGV Ki Aag.

Come on, there’s got to be something good, right? Well, there is – it looks very, very beautiful. So what if it’s all without a purpose? So what if each and every one of those breathtaking locations – those waterfalls, those rivers, those forests, those mountains – seem to be screaming out that there’s nothing Laal about our Maati? And so what if it looks like what might have been if Ram Gopal Varma had attempted a rural Kaminey? Then there’s the music – each inserted at the most inappropriate moments, picturized in the most grandiose fashion complete with choreographed sequences and lip synching (all this a Mani Ratnam trademark I believe), but awesome nonetheless – not just the music, the whole package in spite of it all being – just like the cinematography – mostly pointless.

Pointless. Now that’s one word that perfectly describes the whole set of films (Raavan, Raavanan, Villian – it’s not just one film you know). Wasteful expenditure at its best, or should I say worst. I am to yet to look the exact budget up, but whatever it may be – 20 crores, 50 crores – that amount would have been so much better spent if it were donated for the development of those very people who lives and homes were barely touched upon, let alone explored enough to cause informed discussions. And if philanthropy isn’t their thing, they should have simply stashed away all that dough for one of the many rainy days that are soon to come – after all, monsoons are just around the corner.

Back

Am in no mood to write complete sentences, let alone a full-length post so I’ll keep it short and simple for a change. Am back in Delhi – not for a vacation, but for good. Being back home after 6 years feels good. Why 6 years when engineering is a 4-year course? Well, that’s ‘coz when 2 stubborn entities (me and my college) collide, sparks fly – in my case, I ended up losing 2 years due to attendance. Anyway, I didn’t try for placements, and I didn’t take CAT or GRE or any other competitive exam (those that I wanted to appear for, I couldn’t ‘coz of lack of time to prepare, and also ‘coz their dates clashed with my final sem vivas). Even though my final sem theory exams are over, due to what I am assuming is atychiphobia, whenever I think about them, I am always afraid that something might go wrong and I might have to go back just to clear that one subject in order to actually become a graduate. Lot has changed over these 6 years and I wish to write about them soon. Not now though.

Raajneeti

There’s something about Prakash Jha and his second halves. But let’s not dwell upon that – after all, even though he might be occupying the sidecar, at the end of the day he does belong to the Bollywood bandwagon. Plus that’s the least of his war crimes as there are other, more pressing issues – all of which collaborate to make sure that it doesn’t quite make the impact one expected it to.

So, the casting – Ranbir Kapoor and Arjun Rampal, really? Granted, their performances prove that they are a couple of young actors who are constantly improving and are here to stay, but why push them into the foreground at the expense of such stalwarts as Manoj Bajpai (whoops, Bajpayee) and his old favourites Nana Patekar and Ajay Devgan (edit: Devgn)? And what’s with cheating the audiences by giving Naseeruddin Shah a blink-and-miss appearance during the elongated opening credits sequence after having him share equal footage during the trailers and posters? And more than anything else, why was being cinematic given a priority of over everything else? Simplicity of storyline gave way to a complex plot filled with numerous (many of them unneeded) subplots, but what’s worse was that for such a seemingly heavy film, accuracy was made a scapegoat and sacrificed at the altar.

Bollywood, it is well known, is obsessed with two texts – one is Devdas, the other, Mahabharat. While the first one has been adapted over a dozen times in nearly half a dozen languages, the latter finds itself used and abused in part or as a whole every now and then. Raajneeti is mostly the latter, with a good deal of The Godfather also thrown in for good measure. It starts off well enough (even though you’ll spend the first half hour playing Mahjong tiles in your head) – as you’d expect, the modern-day Karna, Sooraj (Devgn) is an illegitimate child of the Kunti equivalent Bharati (Nikhila Tirkha) set adrift down the Ganga at Benares (as opposed to Moses down the Nile – also, where Ganga and Benares fit into the Bhopal and Madhya Pradesh scheme of things is beyond me) by Brij Gopal, the ever-scheming character played by Nana Patekar which is a composite of Shakuni and Krishna.

Sutputra becomes a Dalit car driver’s son, the party’s Dhritarashtra, instead of being blind, suffers a paralytic attack that conveniently allowing him to enunciate “keep your friends close, your enemies closer” in a Marlon Brando fashion. And while all this might seem to be a bit too far-fetched in print, it works really well on screen – what doesn’t work is the second half which, by virtue of almost everything being so obviously contrived, is downhill all the way from the peak that was the period just before the interval. Heck, it is so forced that even though there is a plot twist every thirty seconds or so, you aren’t in the least bit taken aback – because you’ve seen/read The Godfather and you know your Indian mythology, so you know almost exactly what’s going to happen and who will end up on the winning side at the end of it all.

Ranbir as Samar and Arjun as jyesht bhratashri Prithvi (the characters a composite of the Paanch Pandavas as well as brothers Corleone), while adequate in their portrayals which are definitely the highest points in their respective personal career graphs so far, are unable to completely shed their urban youth persona. That works well enough for Ranbir at the outset since he is phoren-return, having stayed away from the dirty family business (of politics as opposed to organized crime as was the case with Al Pacino – or, closer home, AB Jr in Sarkar) but his later political cunning is unconvincing – you can’t help but think that this is an actor who’s playing out as per his script, and thus can’t connect. Case in point – one scene in which he tries to address the party using shudh Hindi. That way, Arjun’s better – at least, he scales down better than his young counterpart. But there’s no doubt that any of the fine character actors who regularly crop up in the parallel cinema of today would done more justice to these roles.

Among the others, Nana and Manoj have somewhat meaty roles and are quite good, although you can’t help but feel that Manoj as well as Ajay (who is shockingly underutilized) try a bit too hard to make their limited presence felt and end up hamming on at least a couple of occasions. The females have absolutely no place in the first half – in the second half, Sarah Thompson is a mostly unwanted presence, while Katrina Kaif as Indu is forced into the political limelight by the script (the Sonia Gandhi likeliness is definitely by design, what with Kaif mouthing her own Hindi lines with an uncannily similar accent that made it seem that it was she and not Ranbir who had just returned from a stint abroad). Did I miss anyone? All done? Phew. So now, moving on to my other, non-acting issues.

You can talk about cinematic and creative liberties all you want, but you cannot possibly justify such glaring inaccuracies – the fact remains that you just can’t expect to be taken seriously if you portray the political activities of one of the largest states of the country to be confined within one regional party which lords over the miniscule presence of the national party in their state, both of whom get away with mere mentions of coalitions and opposition. Such incorrect representations of the prevalent system are the reasons why films like Yuva and Gulaal just end up garnering critical acclaim and gaining a cult following but are miserable failures when it comes to inspiring the people esp. the youth of our nation. That apart, the songs were all unnecessary – and there was, is and will never be any reason for PJ to squeeze that item number in every single time.

There might be other issues but this review is getting out of hand here so I’ll quickly wrap up now. All said and done, Raajneeti may have scores of flaws but in spite of them is still worth a watch – it’s much better than your usual Bolly fare, and it is powerful, esp. the first half. So lock away your knowledge of the Indian polity, go watch this and give yourself a brownie point each time you correctly identify a Mahabharat or a Godfather equivalency.

(Watched the 2:30pm show on 4th June ’10 @ Cinemax Vashi)

Farewell?

The following is purely a product of my cynicism – any person taking this personally will be solely responsible for the negative feelings that might get aroused within him/her.

So, we had the last of our lectures sometime in the second week of this month (Okay, 9th of April – I remember the date. Big deal.) and ever since then, everybody who is anybody – teacher’s pets, nerds, double triple droppers, potential university toppers, rowdies, etc. etc. – had been getting really excited about this farewell business. Fair enough – even though it happens every year, this time we wouldn’t be the gatecrashing sophomores or the imperfect hosts from the penultimate year. This was going to be our farewell.

Then again, did it merit so much excitement? Forget the kinds I mentioned – in our college, there’s only one splitting attribute (yes yes, too much data mining). So, there are people who head back home at exactly 3.30 or 4.30 (or 5.30, or 6.30 – depending upon your semester and branch), and there are people who don’t. The former bunch is so obsessed with securing their future that they don’t let go at any point throughout their college life; the latter bunch lets go so often through the four (or more) years that in all probability this night is a step down. So, the former try and dress up and have fun; the latter look at the former and go crazy laughing; the former look at the latter laughing and think they are doing so with them, not at them.

Okay, maybe not – maybe everyone’s actually nostalgic about spending that last fun evening together. But we do have a bunch of other things. The guys dress up (in “smart casuals” which is generally accepted to be the de-facto partying attire – perfectly alright), the girls dress up even more. Sadly, many of them think that it means wearing the shortest possible dress and plunging their faces in a mountain of powder not unlike Al Pacino in Scarface just so that they look good (read: fair). Someone needs to tell them that:

• looks don’t matter (and if you can convince yourself that they do, you can just as easily convince yourself that you’re pretty enough to matter),
• Fair & Lovely ads rarely speak the truth, and, most importantly,
• today it’s talc, tomorrow it might be silicon – please exhibit restraint!

So, the dressed-up guys (who are even louder than usual) and the decked-up girls spend the better part of the evening clicking each other’s snaps (interacting like long lost buddies even though they did not even acknowledge their existence in the not-so-distant past). That’s until the food arrives – a wholesome vegetarian thali cooked especially in the college canteen. Yes. And after that is the “jam session”. No, not the musicians from the third year improvising – hell no, it’s the final year people trying to dance to the tune of loud, blaring music (usually trashy remixes of golden oldies and rock staples, other than the usual mix of house and hip-hop).

And then there’s the “unoff” – at some place where you’re expected to pay 600 bucks to enter and have an unlimited amount of your choice of booze in order to redeem that amount and in that drunken state, well, “dance” till you drop. And drop most people do, especially since many are first-timers and many more just don’t know when to stop. So they create a ruckus, barf all over the place, spoil their relations with some person of the opposite sex who they got acquainted to just a couple of hours back and finally pass out, thereby proving to be a major nuisance for their immediate friends.

So, if you enjoyed yourself that night, I am happy for you – but I expect you to understand that I was in no mood to force myself, for the umpteenth time, to be a part of something which I always knew I wasn’t going to enjoy.

PS. Thanks DJs (should I mention your names here?) for not playing Nashik dhol.

Return To Sender

Dearest Kanu,

To begin with, I am deeply saddened by your recent bereavement, but what saddens me even more deeply is how little coverage your passing got in the media, which is really surprising given that the media is much less the Fourth Estate and much more a multi-headed money-hungry business behemoth scrounging for every last scrap of potential news to devour in a way that’s louder and more in-your-face (well, in-my-face, given that you’re, you know, dead).

Anyway, moving on, I feel it is my duty to inform you that this letter wasn’t meant to be addressed to you at first. Since this is a very generic rant about how things are and how they should but cannot possibly be corrected, I had no idea who the ideal person to address this to would be. Luckily for me, you decided to kill yourself and I got myself the perfect recipient – being the armchair activist/coffee house ideologue that I like to call myself, even if I had zeroed in on that one living person, finding out his/her address would have been too much of a bother. It’s already midway into the second paragraph so I should quit rambling and instead cut straight to the chase. Ever since I developed an interest in the India-Bharat dichotomy, I have always held the movement initiated by you and Charu in a positive light – well, at least back when it started, when it was about the peasants as well as the evil landlords getting their dues, by hook or by crook. Since then, there have been innumerous splits, you had mended your “unparliamentary” ways (in today’s terms, you had sold out) and shunned the modern-day Naxals, who in turn had shunned you.

This is where I’d like to say something I’ve felt for a long time – the reason why communism in most of its forms has failed the world over is because man is too individualistic a creature to be successfully a part of a collectivist venture for long. Sooner or later, differences creep in – major ones, that end up dividing the comrades for good. Which is why there are so many brands of communism, so much so that while the parliamentary Leftists would term you Naxals as anarchists who are the antithesis of Marxists, you guys like to think you’re the only ones who are true to the cause of the people (side-note – since Mao’s beliefs applied to the China of back then, while Marshall said that every region has its own questions and therefore its own answers, wouldn’t it be better if you guys become Titoists instead of Maoists?). That, and the lust for power – while almost all Leftist revolutions have started out with noble causes, once power had been usurped, comradeship gaya tel lene.

So while anyone who has anything resembling a heart will agree that communism is the way to go for the betterment of people (if nothing else it accords us the status of humans unlike capitalism in which we are merely human resources), the fact that everyone has his/her own brand of communism coupled with the fact that we humans lust for power and once we have it, let it go to our heads has meant that the theory has never been proven practically. Still, if I had to choose one over the other, I’ll go for it since capitalism is skewed even on paper. Also, parliamentary communists are possibly the biggest hypocrites ever- which goes without saying, given the track record of the so-called “worker’s men” whose sons and daughters are raking in the moolah, having created empires thanks to their daddies. So not cool.

Anyway, I have always found it intriguing how those who provide the most essential services to the society occupy the bottom rungs of the society, those who manage them but don’t ever stoop down to actually do any real work are above them and those who employ and supervise these managers get to sit back, zip around in their imported sedans and/or SUVs with their Vaios and Blackberrys in tow, make huge profits and hand a minute share of their spoils down to their sub-ordinates. At about the same level are the stars of the show – the politicians, the sportstars (edit that: cricketers; other sportspersons are rarely stars and more often than not share the space at the bottom) and the entertainers. The first ones are supposed to run this country and look after the needs of its billion-odd citizens; the others earn all the money and the fame that there is for grabs while doing things that can hardly be described as essential for the survival of the aforementioned billion-odd citizens.

What can possibly be done to correct this? Nothing, I guess. This is how things are, have always been and will always be, all over the world, not just here in India. India. Ah, now here’s a country that has one of the most complex polities imaginable. A country that was until 1947 merely a major part of a geographical region that was hastily clubbed together by its oppressors of over two centuries who were in a big hurry to pack up and leave. While it remains to be seen whether we end up going the Balkan way, from then till now this is our country and we (the, er, living?) are its citizens. Digressed, didn’t I? What I was saying is that given the kind of set-up that we’re a part of, everyone has a fixed role. Ours is not only to vote right but also to do all we can for the overall equalization of the people in terms of socio-economic standing and overall standard of living.

From what I’ve read, Mr. Sanyal, you guys were disillusioned by the practicalities of the democratic form of governance and had lost faith in the parliamentary procedures. Rightly so. The fixed roles that I mentioned are such that the less fortunate ones need to rely upon the more fortunate ones – and this distinction wasn’t decided overnight but through a social order that has persisted over the centuries, modified by the sensibilities of all the influx which got assimilated in this mostly synthetic fabric. So when people esp. the latter forget their roles, the common man is bound to feel cheated, as the case must’ve been in the late 60s/early 70s, which the films of Ray, Sen, etc. tell me was when half the bhadralok were sympathetic to the cause of the people. Of course, a lot of water has flown under the bridge since then – the govt. opened up the floodgates in the early 90s, the common man was tempted by the apples on offer in the garden of private enterprise and conveniently forgot their duties as citizens of a relatively young nation.

So much, then, for the people’s war. As long as the all-powerful nexus keeps the common man on a leash, there is no way a mass awakening is going to happen. Till then, someone has to look after the marginalized segments of the society, esp. those who do not form a part of one of the many separatist movements at our various (highly porous) international borders. I am not a student of economics or commerce, and neither do those subjects interest me enough for me to study them on my own. For me, the Sensex is just a random number; the country’s growth rates and GDP probably matter as much to me as Sachin Tendulkar’s batting averages and no. of centuries – just for the record, they don’t. All that matters to me is the condition of the people – and while liberalization has indeed improved the lives of many in the metros, and also resulted in vast improvements in the second-tier cities as well as many small towns, the betterment is, if one thinks about it, relative and not absolute. And then, there are parts that cannot possibly be described as urban – entire stretches between major railway stations on a trip between any pair of the metros – that are still awaiting those marginal improvements.

I always believed that you Reds can be entrusted with this responsibility, especially since the powers that be seem to be least interested in the upliftment let alone the development of these regions – regions that are spread all over the heartland. There have been positive results over the years. In a country whose judiciary is notorious for having decades worth of pending cases, the “people’s courts” have been known to mete out speedy justice; civil servants and grassroots level politicians have been forced to release funds meant for development, albeit at gunpoint. And while half the people prominent on various forms of media refer to your ilk as terrorists (the other half comprising of the creative, intellectual types too busy romanticizing the whole thing), it must be noted that at any given point of time in history, those fighting for the majority against the tyranny of the ruling minority have inadvertently been referred to as terrorists by the rulers. It’s just a matter of perspective – hell, those branded terrorists by the British are the same people we hail now as freedom fighters.

A democracy may not have any place for vigilante justice but when the democratic machinery fails, such extra-judicial methods can be condoned as long as the sole purpose is to oil the rusty parts and to put back in their right slots or eliminate those loose nuts and bolts that having fallen off are acting as hindrances. But the moment the liberators cease being Robin Hoods and start giving in to the lust for power, the moment their actions result in the lumpen elements becoming victims all over again. So, even though you haven’t been associated with the current bunch for the longest time, the fact remains that they are fruits of a tree whose seeds you planted. And while I respect your original stance, with every passing action of your proteges, it is becoming increasingly difficult for me (and I am sure for hundreds of others like me) to support the movement, because there is no justification for the massacre of the innocents.

So maybe you can get these 3rd generation rebels to explain – exactly why did they behead Francis Induwar? Other than stealing weapons and ammunition, is there even one reason why they chose to massacre 76 – seventy-six – CRPF soldiers? Why have they been running amok and every now and then butchering not devious landlords or corrupt politicians and bureaucrats or some other influential figure who they know for a fact has committed atrocities but against whom they don’t have any nailing evidence, but the same innocent tribals and villagers they claim to be working for the upliftment of?

A couple of months ago, an IAS officer in Gadhchiroli said that he agreed with all but one point on the agenda of the Naxals – that one being armed violence. I am sure that your proteges must’ve killed him and his family off as well. From the statement he made, he seemed to be one of the good ones. Now that I think about it, it isn’t really surprising that your death hardly evoked any sympathy from the press. R. I. P. Kanu Sanyal. If you can, that is.

Yours hesitatingly,