Reading Pico Iyer in India

The day after I landed in Mumbai on vacation, I started reading Pico Iyer’s Tropical Classical. Pico Iyer’s one of my favorite writers of any kind now. He is ostensibly a travel writer. However, his writing resonates as not just a chronicle of new places, sights and sounds, but of journeys within.

But the problem is, reading Pico Iyer while traveling yourself doesn’t seem to work. India is home, but it’s also a journey of sorts, as every trip here is an exercise in melding the familiar with the unfamiliar.

Going to a completely new place is one thing. Going to a place that’s at once familiar (and holds memories) and seeing it changed in 18 months to something that’s different (though not different enough) is disorienting. It’s disorienting enough that reading of religiosity in Ethiopia or tango in Buenos Aires seems just redundant.

Finally, I just gave up. Reading Gurcharan Das’ The Elephant Paradigm seemed more appropriate.

Stories on a trip

Tell me a story
Sing me a song
Of life’s wars lost
And sundry battles won

Tolstoy once wrote “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Traveling groups fall in similar categories. They are similar, yet different in their own ways.

Duomo di Milano, Milan

A precocious pre-teen is skipping up the steps, adult-chic glasses in hand. The father follows the mother. Disaffected teen brings up the rear, clicking away on a phone. She looks like she doesn’t want to be here. I wonder: What happens to children in their teens?

As we climb up to the roof, I see a young girl, presumably with her mother. Late teen, at most early twenties. I think it’s a mother-daughter bonding trip. AG thinks maybe the girl is here studying abroad, and her mother is here to visit her. I like this story better. They seem to be enjoying themselves. The bond they share is visible. I see them repeating this: trips together, new experiences, shared mother-daughter moments.

Passenger Train – Milan to Tirano

A father and young pre-teen boy. The father looks like a young Walter Matthau. His beard already has a salt-and-pepper streak. Again, the father-son bond is apparent. The son holds on to his father’s hands occasionally. They share laughs, secret confidences I half-wish I could eavesdrop on.

It’s a passenger train so I’m guessing this is a day trip. I wonder where the mother is. Is it that the parents are separated, and the child is spending the day with a father sorely missed, a son served up as collateral damage for an unfortunate turn of events?

Maybe it’s just that the mother’s working and father-son managed to take off for a day to bond. I like this story better.

Every story is different in its own way.

This came together in a 15-minute writing burst on the Milan-Tirano train. Thanks to AG “Gullito” for one of the story ideas, for reading an initial draft and his stamp of approval.

Be Kind, Rewind

The flight now seems interminable. I’m looking at a row of seats next to me with screens flickering various stages of recent blockbusters. Ben Stiller is still running amok in museums while Arnold rises, buck-naked elsewhere. Staccato gunfire echoes from someone’s headphones that are way too loud. The steady hum of the jet makes you wonder “Don’t they build sound dampers into this damn thing?”

The end of a vacation is a time of ‘epic suckage’ (to use a recent hip expression I picked up from an acquaintance). Security checks, removing shoes and belts, metal detector passes. Things you grinned and bore with a song your lips on the way out here suddenly become onerous.

Every moment is fraught. “This may be the last time I drink coffee here.” (though, at the back of your mind, you know you’re going to come back. Soon.) Wistfulness sets in even before the trip is over. You look at photos in the tiny screen of a camera, trying to hold on to something that is slipping away, fast.

*sigh*. It’s time to stop fretting. Life as you have known it for years now awaits on the other side of the Atlantic. You try to switch off this feeling of dread by tuning in to the bizarre pleasures of The Hangover.

This was written on the flight out from Zurich to JFK after a most enjoyable 10-day vacation. More posts on the vacation itself coming soon. This was unfortunately the most well thought out of the paper posts from my diary, so this goes up first. Last-In-First-Out, stack-style.

Tijuana, Baja California (Mexico)

Come to think of it, the process is Kafka-esque. You are working at the same job, in the same work designation doing the same kind of work. But at the magic three year mark, the US government decides you must be subjected to a scrutiny not just by someone in the immigration department, but also by someone necessarily outside the country, who then wants to go through all your information (again, since you already submitted it once and it was scrutinized and approved).

But all that was moot as I flew the length of the country to cross the border into Mexico. All so I could get a stamp on my passport to enter and leave the country as I please (till the next time this formality will be required, of course).

I’d heard a few horror stories about Tijuana, but it was as nondescript as any random small town in a developing nation. At least the parts I saw. Apart from two flashing police cavalcades at night, nothing in my time there indicated anything remotely dangerous about the place. But the restaurant I had lunch at had postcards for a number of “Gentlemen’s Club”s at the door. Let’s just say I am more used to seeing brochures for Leukemia “Team in Training” at such places.

There’s dust. Lots of it. Concrete and new construction commingles uncomfortably with rundown old buildings. There’s a statue of Lincoln in a roundabout, the largest one I’ve seen outside of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. The Banamex in that square is the only bank where you can pay your visa fee. Imbibing monopoly economics lessons brilliantly, they charge $150 for a $131 visa fee.

The area outside the US Consulate is a hubbub of activity. The concept of appointments and time is long forgotten as people just jostle to get in line. Someone with a noon appointment can show up by 9 AM and be done before people who have earlier appointments.

As expected, there’s a host of small businesses that have sprung up to cater to the hundreds who walk through the halls of this in-demand institution. A dozen small shops sell “visa photos”, and provide form-filling services et al. A shanty next to the US Consulate offers to hold bags for the princely sum of $3. This is a boon since the Consulate won’t allow phones or electronics inside. But sharks lurk. Someone in line with me (whose cellphone refused to understand ‘roaming’) paid $5 per minute for an emergency call to his lawyer in the US.

No passport on me - it’s in processing at the Consulate for next-day pickup. No car as I walked across the border (it’s less time-consuming and there are less checks). What’s a bored, forced tourist to do in the birthplace of the Caesar salad?

The local mall provided for some entertainment and insight into Mexican consumption. (So many jewelry shops!). The local theater ran latest Hollywood films in English and Espanol. For me and another kindred soul in a similar soup, it came down to watching films I’d already seen or Fuerza G! in Spanish. Luckily we found Mummies: Secrets of the Pharaoh running (again in Spanish) in an IMAX theater nearby.  Feeling particularly adventurous, 35 minutes of sarcophaguses, Ramses and British archaeologists it was. In Spanish.

The next day wasn’t very different. But it was time to pick up my passport and the hour of departure was near. Resignedly, more lines and a gruff border post were negotiated. Unlike that fateful journey across the seven seas seven years ago, this time there was not as much a sense of excitement as a sense of weary relief.

Travel Aside

When you cross the US-Mexico border some 40-odd miles south of San Diego, the world changes. As you make a leap from the first world to the third something vital is different and you know it immediately. This manifests itself differently in different places. In Tijuana, it struck me forcefully at the Starbucks (two blocks from the US Consulate). My idea of Starbucks has evolved to that of a place with chatty tourists, solo wi-fi warriors, stray copies of The Stranger and monotonous iPod white earbuds. However, this place was buzzing with well-dressed PYTs hobnobbing with like-looking others, male and female. The vibe was more Paris cafe than border huckster and proved that there’s more to this place than met the eye.

Vikram Chandra’s Sacred Games

Sprawling. I think this one word fits Vikram Chandra’s Sacred Games to a T. It’s a meticulously researched  and richly textured work, taking on multiple story arcs. The main arcs weave through the city of Mumbai with tendrils in Singapore, Southeast Asia, touching upon Pune and pre-Partition Punjab in the process.

However, all that research is incidental, since good research isn’t just about facts and places. Chandra’s research leads him into the heads and hearts of the characters he describes. Ostensibly, the book is about a policeman Sartaj Singh and the gangster Ganesh Gaitonde. However, the book is much more than that. It delves into the psyches of characters, major and minor, drawing them out with breathtaking insight. The book feels “lived in”, in the sense that the author knows and understands these people well. He knows their lives, loves and everything in between. He could probably tell you their favorite colors if asked. 

For me, the sudden flashes of insight in this book came at different points. One of them was his sketch of Katekar, Sartaj’s loyal constable. A vivid description of his life in a slum in Mumbai brings him to breathing, swearing life. The use of the four letter Marathi swear word “jh*$” (the f-word) is a good example. I’ve never heard it used after leaving Pune, and seeing it used in the book was a surprise. Yes, a pleasant one. It indicates the author cared enough to find out the vernacular Katekar inhabited, and wanted to use it for effect.

Another personal favorite was when Sartaj asks Kamble “Are you Buddhist?”, bringing years of caste history into sharp relief in a single, careless sentence. (Dalits converted to Buddhism to escape discrimination, following the lead of respected leader Babasaheb Ambedkar). Kamble launches into a diatribe about why he’s not one. It’s a cauldron, bubbling away below the suave womanizing exterior of the whip-smart fast-rising officer.

A good way to look at this book is not as a cinematic arc( though it does have a great film in it). It’s a great mini-series on the city of Mumbai. A set of characters who inhabit that metropolis, their lives, their stories, their loves and betrayals. The tangents bring breathing life to incidental characters and provide insight to a teeming world lurking just out of sight.

The flip side is that all that detail makes it overlong. I guess it depends on what you expect from it.

To use another analogy, if you can get off the straight Mumbai-Pune Expressway and use the old highway to do that journey for the millionth time, there are unexpected riches for the taking.

Eye exam

The letters were big. They grew smaller, until his eyes were begging for mercy.

Then the lenses come on. "Does 1 look better than 2?" Change lens. "Now?". Change lens again. "Now?" "2 or 3?" .

Enough already. How bad was it? Couldn't they just give him the verdict so he'd be on his way?

That's it. His eyes were shot.  All those days of feeling too tired after work must have been because of this. Anyway, he was almost hitting the big 3-0. Time to add some geekiness to the visage?

As he sat there, he idly wondered what kind of frames he'd go for. Did he want thin wire frames, or even rimless glasses? A couple of his friends wore these and they didn't look half-bad. Or maybe he could try the really big, thick-framed glasses - the ones with horn rims like Ira Glass or that guy from Death Cab from Cutie. He wondered about the pain and overhead of wearing glasses - he was pretty lousy even with his sunglasses, forgetting them at various places only to scramble back to pick them up. Maybe contacts was a better way to go? But the idea of inserting plastic into his eyes made him shudder.

This time the doctor came in. The tests (which were first conducted by the assistant) continued. The letters went from readable to barely legible. 2 bled into Z and D into O into 0. It was a game of "fit the right lens", and he was losing. Badly.

"1". "No, 2 is clearer." "Can we try that again? I'm not quite sure." "I can't make out a single letter."

"Try. Give it your best shot."

*sigh* "..." <insert wild guess here>

"Very good."

?! Hm.

The exam comes to an end.

Doc: "It's like your eyes are refusing the glasses. Your eyesight is fine. You even managed to read some of the letters from the 20/15 test!"

All that speculation for nothing. He was slightly relieved - a drastic change to look and lifestyle averted.  

Dead books, tall tales

Buying used books has its own appeal. This generally lies in prowling through musty aisles and rifling through stacks of used books, usually in a nondescript shop in one of the quirkier neighborhoods of Seattle - Fremont, the University area or Capitol Hill. In Seattle, this usually also involves stepping over a cat or two.

The books themselves have their own stories to tell. I prefer "clean" books with no obvious signs of previous ownership, but the occasional random book with blemishes slips through. These can get interesting though.

My copy of The Money Game by Adam Smith has this on the inside title page:

XMas 1994

_____ & _______:

This year's investment classic from your parents (in-law). Read and prosper.

____ & _______

Wise words indeed - "Read and prosper".

When I bought The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Qureishi, I paid little attention to the fact that it was published by Penguin Italia. "Maybe it's an import". However, when I started reading it, out popped a receipt. 

Gelateria Brivido

Via Dei Pellegrini 1-3

Siena

It's a bill for 2500 Liras (that's 1.29 Euros as the receipt helpfully says). It's dated the 14th of September 2000 - that's 14-09-00 for you dd/ mm/ yy'ers. The web tells me that the Lira ceased being legal tender in 2002, replaced completely by the Euro.

It makes me think. What was I doing on the 14th of September 2000? It was a Thursday, meaning I was probably in college in India attending some kind of class or another.

This book's provenance just went from humdrum Barnes & Noble / Amazon to something altogether exotic. How did it end up in a used book store in Seattle? Was it an Italian student who bought it there, eventually ending up  in Seattle and selling the book while leaving? Or more likely, someone from Seattle on a summer trip to Europe? I can see him or her in Europe, taking in the sights of an altogether beautiful and alien continent, reading about an alien adjusting to a new and exciting world.

Dead books tell tall tales.

Encounter

It was the regular morning commute. He took a seat he generally didn't prefer - the first seat in the rear of the articulated bus next to the "bellows". It was invariably noisy there, distracting him from his music and reading.

She got on at the next stop. Cute. Black curly hair. She was wearing those glasses Tina Fey made famously cool on 30 Rock. Come to think of it, she looked a bit like Tina Fey. She sat on a cross seat on the opposite side from his. As the bus lurched its way onto the highway, she got up and sat next to him. She smelled of fresh citrus.

It was as if his brain had just shifted from cruise control to interstellar overdrive. "Is my hair OK?" "Does my breath smell?" "I think I forgot to put on deodorant in the morning." "What book is she reading?" "I think I should talk to her."

In a minute she noticed someone in the front of the bus she knew. Waves were exchanged. Space was found next to this friend. Next thing he knew, she was gone.

This piece was inspired by This American Life's episode 20 acts in 60 minutes. I was trying to write a piece that could be narrated on air, Ira Glass-style within two minutes. This piece is shorter, but, hey, the girl did leave kinda soon.

Bhat...seriously?

I've heard from more than one source that I sound a lot more serious in print than in person. When I write on my blog, write email and so on, I tend to come across as being quite serious. There have been rumblings from some quarters that I sound like a preppy upstart. DQ remarked on my seriousness once, and I've had other friends say the same.

The musings on this blog tend to be introspective, well-thought-out and so on. I can punctuate my writings with :), LOLs and :p, but what the heck, my blog was meant to challenge my writing style and not my texting vocabulary (which is fine, thx! ). If trying to be articulate and very precise with my vocabulary in speech and in writing is a crime, guilty as charged.

However, all this seriousness isn't because I don't have a sense of humor. It's just that my sense of humor is not very bloggable. I find humor in stuff I talk about, observe (especially personality traits, attitudes etc) and not in things I write about. It's also that I'm never satisfied with the attempts at 'humor' I make and they never end up on my blog for the same reason. Being a medicore humor-attempter is fodder for a Seinfeld 2.0 episode.

Elaine: "He writes lame jokes on his blog."

Seinfeld: "He's a pseudo-humorist!"

Elaine:"OMG, I just met a pseudo-humorist! Is it infectious?!"

This leads to a weird dichotomy: a somber persona online combined with a dry, sardonic tongue-in-cheek flesh-and-blood personality. The twain do meet, in the form of this person, who long ago learned that caring too deeply about what people think about you tends to over-analysis of your own behavior, which is never fun. As coeus would say "Doosron ke bare mein soch ke kiska bhala hua hai."

*The title of this post is pure genius, which is not me. Hat-tip to elder Bhratashree. It's also to avoid actually saying "Why so serious?!" - the dialog cliche of the year.

Tale of a day set right

Prelude

7:30 AM - To self: "Wake up. You've got lots of work to do today."

7:50 AM - "OK this is it. Enough is enough. At this rate I'll be really late to work."

8:00 AM - Finally wake up to a miserable day out.

8:20 AM - I'm getting ready. Maybe I can get out of here by 8:40.

8:40 AM - Ha! I'm still wolfing down breakfast.

8:50 AM - The 16 is here. Why the 16? The 5 would've saved me a few minutes getting to downtown. But I'll take what I get.

9:45 AM - I'm walking to office from the Transit Center. "Alright! Will be in office before 10 - only half an hour later than planned. Work to be done."

Act I

10 AM - As I'm prepping a couple of machines for testing, I'm furiously multitasking, catching up with the market and bailout news...wait, what's that? Neil Gaiman's reading from his new book in Seattle tonight.

OMG OMG OMG, Neil Gaiman's in town. Wait, he has a new book out and I didn't know?!

I *have* to go for this! Chance of a lifetime! It's Neil Gaiman!

It's at 7 in U. District in Seattle, so I need to get out of work by 5:45. If I really rush my way through work, have a quick lunch, maybe I can get done here sooner.

1:30 PM - Things looking OK and on track.

Act II

2:30 PM - Why TF is that happening? An AV, of all things? Why today? Why now?

4:30 PM - NJ and I are no closer to figuring out what the problem is. NJ goes and tries something to fix a separate unrelated bug, re-builds and voila! The problem is gone. I'll still have to chase it down later, but the crisis is averted for now.

5:45 PM - I'm still not done here. Neil Gaiman's not happening. *sigh*

6:20 PM - Overlake Transit Center. I'm waiting for the 545. Me to self: "If I make it to the Montlake stop by 6:50, I'll take it as an Omen. I'll go then. Otherwise I'll go all the way to downtown and take the 5 home."

6:30 PM - The bus is whizzing through insane Friday-evening traffic. Hurray for the carpool lane! At this rate, I'll make it to Montlake by 6:50!

Act III

6:50 PM - Montlake ramp sidewalk - Two buses whizz by as I'm walking up to the Montlake Ave stop. Bummer. I'm going to have to walk 8-10 blocks which will take a minimum of 20 minutes.

6:52 PM - Montlake Ave stop - the 48 pulls up just as I reach it. That'll save me 10 minutes.

6:58 PM - A girl is asking the driver where the University Bookstore and church are. I ask her "Are you going to the Neil Gaiman reading? Do you know exactly where it is?." "Yes. My friend told me it's in the church across the street from the bookstore."

7:00 PM - We( The Girl From The Bus & I ) are rushing down 15th Ave NE and then across on 42nd street. We're late!

7:05 PM - I've paid up for the book. It's either that or a $5 fee. The clerk tells me that the book is autographed. Yay! Also, because of a number of buses running late, the reading's not started yet. Double yay!

7:10 PM - We make our way in: a Safeway grocery clerk from Ballard and a software 'serf from India, talking about the awesomeness of Neil Gaiman's writing and how crazy it was to make it here in time with the insufficient notice. (She learnt of it 20 minutes back just as she got off duty)

7:15 PM - Gaiman's finally on stage! He looks much shorter in real person, but as impish (and as good-looking) as in his photographs. Shorter hair than his recent pictures I've seen elsewhere.

He reads a full 40-page chapter from his latest, The Graveyard Book. It's good. The chapter is also curiously self-sufficient. I later realize it's a short story by itself in M is for Magic.

8:30 PM - Post-reading, there's a short break and we're back to a sneak preview of Coraline, based on a comic book by him.

9:00 PM - Q & A. He's really funny in real life too. That droll British sense of humor shines through. To top it, he reads from a new poem book Blueberry Girl. It's absolutely beautiful. As he ends, he gets a standing ovation from the 850-odd people in the audience.

Epilogue

9:40 PM - I'm out on the street, waiting for the 44 to take me home. There's a smile on my face and a song on my lips as a dull, regular "wait-for-the-weekend" Friday was transformed. And I have an autographed Neil Gaiman book to show for it.

Writing for writers

Neil Gaiman's Fragile Things is a little gem of a book. It's a collection of short stories and poetry, most of which has been published elsewhere. There's some stories here which are absolute masterpieces - notably A Study in Emerald which explores the world of Sherlock Holmes in a brilliant pastiche. Other great pieces include The facts in the Strange Departure of Miss Finch and The Problem of Susan. There's a couple of really good poems and a story with my favorite title - How to talk to Girls at Parties.

That, however isn't the defining part of the book. The book comes with a long preface where Gaiman explores the how, where, why and what of the story. By providing more detail about each story's provenance and the circumstances around writing it, Gaiman in his inimitable way manages to make the book more than what it is. He gives us an insight into his creative process.

Neil Gaiman is proficient at creating his own worlds. The Sandman series, his atmospheric American Gods, the magical Stardust and Anansi Boys prove that beyond a doubt. But in this series, instead of working with a huge canvas, Gaiman paints smaller, more intimate word pictures.

The child on the way home from school passing a haunted house. Four men narrating ghost tales in a club. In addition, he even manages to find himself in a box with a smaller area to work with - writing a piece for a Doyle meets H P Lovecraft short story collection ( resulting in A Study in Emerald) or another inventive, fun piece based in the world of The Matrix films (written on the basis of the original screenplay to go on the official website before the film was released).

Celebrating writing in every genre in every which way, Gaiman channels his creative genius and somehow manages to, through his writing (which is uneven) and his exposition (which is personable and inviting), inspire. Traveling with him, being creative doesn't seem so daunting anymore.

A double-header review on the Lit Blog - reviews of "The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes" and "Marvel 1602".

Imitation  as a form of tribute

Comments there, please.

Words

Say them. Feel the way the syllables form and curl around your tongue. Watch them turn cartwheels and somersaults across the arena of your imagination. Smell them. Taste them. Delight in the pure joy that comes from a metaphor well-used or a comment well-directed.

Dare stop the tears that well in your eyes when Steinbeck's characters hold their heads high in The Grapes of Wrath. Try suppressing that giggle as Bertie Wooster bumbles again, and sniff in contempt as Jeeves saves the day again. Gaze agape at the fount of fables that is Neil Gaiman.

Why stop at reading? Stand tall when you deliver that impeccably worded one-liner with a smirk on your lips. Cringe when someone uses the same three adjectives all the time to describe completely unrelated things. Distill some of what you read (nay, drink, imbibe) into something of your own.

Try and make them stand on their own feet. OK. Maybe you are ambitious. Try and make them do their own stunts.

Use them. Respect them as they are your best friends. And your worst enemies.

The Matrix has you

A cold, surprisingly dry winter's night. It's a lonely office complex building with dried leaves all around. The wind blows harder than it normally does, disturbing the leaves. They fly around causing small swirls, mini-typhoons all by themselves. The rustling is loud.

There's a lone figure walking out into this quiet storm. 

I can almost hear the subway train passing by. And a voice from left off-screen. "Mr. Anderson...".

Good Will Hunting

I like trying different genres of writing from time to time. Next on the agenda is a play (we are reading Cyrano de Bergerac in a book club I'm part of ). However, out of pure curiosity, I decided to try a screenplay.

I first remember skimming through the screenplay of Pulp Fiction in a bookshop a few years back. The words lept out at me in a way the dialog on screen didn't.

So, when a cursory search on the local library database indicated that the screenplay for a personal favorite, Good Will Hunting was 'on shelf' (versus having to put a hold on it and wait for it to be returned), I took it as a sign and picked it up then and there.

Film, needless to say, is a very visual medium and the screenplay reflects it. Physical descriptions of characters are more detailed, and there's scenery descriptions much more detailed than in a play. There are moving shots, descriptions of shots of the Boston skyline, the Charles River and so on. Since Good...is a spare film in terms of its setting (it's fully set in Boston), it's less so than, say, a Lord of the Rings would be.

The film narrates a short period in the life of Will Hunting, an orphan genius who works as a janitor in MIT. He is 'discovered' by a mathematics professor, and along the way, meets a psychologist - an equal to his genius and attitude. The film is very Hollywood and triumphant in some ways, celebrating 'smarts' over 'intellectualism' - as director Gus Van Sant puts it succinctly in the foreword.

But the dialog. Oh, the dialog. Crisp, quirky and celebrating the art of the repartee, it makes the film what it is. It is hard to imagine two young Hollywood actors writing this script. Especially not young actors whose names are Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. But they did, and they did well enough to win an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.

I've seen the film and it's hard to imagine reading this and making a lot of it without seeing Robin Williams as Sean and Matt Damon as Will. That's the bane of reading a book adapted into a movie after watching the movie or reading a screenplay. It's difficult to immerse yourself and create a world of your own. The world-vision you have of it is slightly contaminated by what you've seen before.

But this has been an immensely enjoyable journey into the world of Will Hunting.

Skylar: Maybe we should go out for coffee sometime?

Will: Great, or maybe we could go somewhere and just eat a bunch of caramels.

Skylar: What?

Will: Come to think of it, it's just as arbitrary as drinking coffee.

Indian Ocean: An Oasis of hope

A slightly modified version of this article appeared in Hafta magazine last week.

A common problem with so-called "fusion" artists is that the fusion between the different aspects of music seems forced. This is true especially of wannabe popstars with art-house pretensions or one of the many emigrant/second-generation South Asians on the underground scene in the UK or USA. The best (Nitin Sawhney is one name that comes to mind) have definitely have made use of their hybrid upbringing and myriad influences, bringing something of that into the music they make . However, the worst of the 'fusion' genre generally involves an obligatory tabla or dhol beat interspersed with hip-hop rhythms and rap competing with Indian vocals.

At the other end of the spectrum is the one Indian band whose music brings the word "organic" to mind. Indian Ocean fuses together various elements of their influences and beliefs as musicians and human beings to create music that may be called 'fusion', but this fusion sounds natural and not forced.

Be it the dramatic segues on Bhor (on Jhini), or the Knopfleresque flourish of wizardry at the end of Khajuraho (on Kandisa), Indian Ocean has time and again shown why it is so difficult to pigeon-hole them as a band. Promiscuously absorbing influences from Indian folk, rock music and adding the improvisational sensibility of jazz, Indian Ocean creates a collage of sound that is uniquely Indian and contemporary.

Indian Ocean is a paradox in many ways. They've been around for 15 years, yet haven't had the kind of mainstream success that you'd expect. They have a cult following among certain sections of the population and yet, a large number of people haven't heard of them, leave alone heard their music.

They are Indian, yet they follow the American band model of incessant touring and live shows to build their popularity (versus the traditional music-video route, though they have had a music video for Jhini out). They perform songs that are political in tone (Ma Rewa - based on a traditional folk song, is about the river Narmada - a dam on this river is at the center of a controversy), yet refuse to be labeled a political band. Ironically, their biggest shot at mainstream attention - the soundtrack for Black Friday went down quietly since the movie itself ended up running only for a day in theatres before being pulled.

The band, however, soldiers on, going from strength to strength. They are on the road continuously, and are now on their fourth tour of the US, where people who've heard them back in college(or not) attend their concerts to be blown away by their live performances.

Still grounded and extremely down-to-earth, the band members are a revelation. They made the courageous decision to live off their music a few years after they started. Was it a hard decision to make? "When we decided to, it didn't seem like a big thing." says Susmit, the guitarist. "But then, as kids you do things that when you are grown up, you think about and say "I could have died doing that."" he says, and laughs.

Animated and well-read, the band members are livewires off-stage too. Effortlessly riffing off well-known Hindi and English film songs, satirizing everything from the humble coconut to George W Bush, they keep their hosts and us (the host's guests) in splits. For a group that just rocked a 500-strong crowd for two and a half hours, their spirits are high and their energy infectious - a requirement for the time spent away from family on tour. "The band is like family to each one, in some ways substituting for our real families back home, at least when we are on the road." says Asheem.

One can only hope that the effervescent spirit and passion that resulted in the formation and sustenance of Indian Ocean takes root in the hearts of more talented artists throughout the country. The purity of their music, their refusal to compromise on their beliefs and their success despite the odds is a beacon of hope for creative people who despair at the present state of Indian popular culture.

Clarity

"The idea is to be someone, to rise and rise in every way possible. To be among people but to soar. I suppose there's always weed for that but it isn't really my scene."

A lovely piece by Rahul Bhatia (it's an old piece, and I wanted to link to it for a while). It's about the choices we face and the decisions we make.

Sox-y Adventures

I'm not given to Seinfeld-esque observations because I'm simply not as funny as the man. However, there are quirky everyday mysteries that make you really wonder about the laws of physics and suchlike phenomenon.

One of them involves my laundry.

I saw this advertisement within my office building for an internal company campaign of some sort. It shows a washing machine and a single sock. The theme of the advertisement was: "Some things will always remain a mystery."

Tell me about it. One of the most mysterious (and infuriating) things about doing your laundry is sorting all your clothes once you are done. If you have clothes in the load which are prone to attracting static, heaven help you. By the time the dryer's done, many of your static-y clothes are filled with enough electricity to power a small bulb (I'm sure Mohan Bhargava could have put this idea to some use) and they are all sticking to each other. The worst culprits, of course are the socks. Invariably, one sock (or three, or five. It has to be an odd number) will go missing. After sorting all your laundry, you are left with that mysterious odd one out.

More than once in the past few months, I've had this wonderful mystery. All my laundry's put away, making for a successful weekend (or rather, a peaceful week ahead) and the next thing I know, there's a single sock left. It sits there, in the corner of my bedroom, in silent admonishment of a job badly done. I look at it before I go to sleep most nights, wondering if I should get up and turn my wardrobe upside down to search for it. Invariably, sleep is too tempting.

I dread the day when I'll wear a sweatshirt to work, and some pretty girl (the kind I absolutely don't want to be embarrassed in front of) will say "What's that sticking out of your sweatshirt"? and it'll turn out to be that pesky sock stuck to the inside of my fleecewear.

Write on

Blogs have opened up this whole new world of writing.

You now have access to all sorts of writers. Amateurs. Professionals. Amateurs so good that they ought to be professionals, and people who should be banned for sullying the written word.

There are blogs that are so beautifully written that reading them is intimidating. “Will I ever write anything half as compelling?", you ask yourself. "Keeping at this isn’t making my writing any better. Should I just stop, and go back to mundane, unjournalled existence?”

Then there are blogs that stun you with their simplicity . (Unfortunately, he just stopped blogging). That ache to capture the simple moments of life which make it all worth the while is manifested only in the attempts of a chosen few. For the rest of us mortals, there is only amazement.

This accessibility of material and simplicity of prose is dangerous. It makes you think that with practice, you may actually write that well. Hope isn’t such a bad thing though. Neither is ambition. But delusion is.

Head down. Blog on. Always remember "de parvus grandis a cervus erit".* There may be hope for you yet.

*from small things arise great ones

Driving with Elan(tra)

While watching the Super Series, I learnt that the ICC Player of the Year was to get a Hyundai Elantra. I remember as a child the wonder that we all had, when Ravi Shastri won an Audi for becoming the Champion of Champions at the World Series in 1985.

Seeing an Audi on the street (a rare sight in India then, and even now, I'm sure), we'd go "Ooo, Ravi Shastri won an Audi". Things sure have come a long way since then

Audi -> Hyundai. hmm.. I'm not sure I like this journey.

Hyundai of course is big in India now - a huge seller of cars with SRK endorsing them. I'm sure they must have gotten a lot of leverage out of this. Boatloads of money made by the ICC?

The big question is, are either Kallis or Flintoff going to hold on to theirs? Their endorsement money will surely buy them fancier Italian or German models. Will the car have enough sentimental value for them to keep it, maybe for the missus to go down to the grocery store in? She could surely try the Quattroporte. Lots of trunk space in that, I hear.

I sure hope they do (hang on to their cars). Then there'll be only one degree of separation betwixt yours truly and Freddie and Jacques. You see, I drive an Elantra too. Oh, the horror.