South Asia Daily

Truckler-in-chief?

President Barack Obama (Photo: www.whitehouse.gov)

It is being reported with barely concealed glee that Apple now has more cash ($76.2 billion) on hand than the U.S. government ($73.8 billion). Somewhere along the line, the implication of the news seems to be that a private corporation is better run than the US government. More money, ergo, greatness, ergo, worship-worthy. 

It may be useful to remind those who make the two leaps that while one makes slick but barely necessary products without which life will not end, the other has to concern itself with every conceivable human frailty and folly. If you cannot tell the difference between the two, you are only fit to carry an iPad2 and watch ‘Shrek Forever After’ all day long. Don’t get me wrong. I love Shrek as well but I also need money to buy iPad2 and ‘Shrek Forever After.’

That said, this morning I was planning to write about how and why President Barack Obama’s liberal base feels duped by him as he increasingly looks like a truckler cowering in front of the hordes of unreasonable right wing politicians.

As I began formulating it in my mind, it struck me that it makes no sense to me whatsoever. I don’t just mean Obama and his ways but the whole scene out of Washington. It all seems surreal to the extent that I cannot comprehend it and put it in words. These guys first light a level 6 fire under their own ass and then complain that their ass is getting roasted unless the world extinguishes it. What’s the point of that?

I have no problem with pointlessness and meaninglessness since I have spent all my life with the clear realization and acceptance of cosmic pointlessness and meaninglessness. It’s all bogus anyway. But for those who take life a little more seriously than I do, and particularly for liberals, there is a sense of having been flattered to deceive by Obama. The New York Times today talks about the president’s “rightward tilt” in matters of fiscal policymaking under pressure from the Republican Party.

At the core of liberal disillusionment with Obama is what Bill Maher, America’s most trenchant and astute political comic, says is the president’s failure to pursue objectives and policy options that his Democratic Party believes in. The notion that partisanship ends once you enter the White House is unrealistic because Obama, or for that matter any president, gets elected and rejected purely on partisan considerations. That is how democracy is supposed to function. Obama was elected by 52.9 % of the electorate because they agreed with his broad vision for America, which included policies that he now seems so eager to cast aside because the political climate has changed.

One way of looking at Obama is to say that he is merely adjusting himself to the political reality of the day. That’s a fair way of looking at his predicament and the way he is trying to fight out of it. An equally compelling, albeit doctrinaire, view would be to say that he has no principles that he would not bargain away in the interest of self-serving politics. Maureen Dowd of the Times puts it effectively when she writes, “Amid the chilling anarchy, there’s not a single strong leader to be seen — not even a misguided one. All the leaders are followers. You have to wonder if President Obama at some level doesn’t want to lead. Maybe he just wants to be loved.”

In the end, only Obama and those very close to him know what really they are up against and what animates his own conduct. From the outside, we can only wonder and speculate on the basis what clearly seems like a man who would rather yield than yell.

Meanwhile, the liberals’ plight can be aptly described by the profound Indian expression, “Sab ka chutiya kat gaya hai.”

China between schadenfreude and condescension

 

I am sure China cannot decide whether to grin in schadenfreude or grit its teeth in tension as it watches the absurd political theater playing out in Washington over the debt ceiling. So it has decided to play it safe and be  condescending.

However, it is a clear sign that global power no longer resides predominantly in Washington when China feels compelled to tell US politicians to end their “irresponsible” brinkmanship over increasing their country’s debt ceiling.

As President Barack Obama grapples with the very real possibility of the US defaulting on its international obligations for the first time in its history unless the debt ceiling is raised by the Congress, Beijing must be shuffling in nervousness. Being the largest holder of US treasuries at $1.6 trillion the last thing the Chinese government wants is for the US to fail to meet its obligations in a matter of days.

In so much as the Chinese news agency Xinhua reflects the official Chinese thinking, there is a damning analysis of the US by one of its analysts, Deng Yushan who writes, “Two subjects are of pressing urgency: How can Washington shake off electoral politics and get difficult jobs done more efficiently? And how can U.S. politicians improve their mindset so that they will care at least a bit more about the rest of the world when handling domestic affairs with global reverberations?

Another ready topic is the United States' debt addiction. With its debt approximating its annual economic output, it is time for Washington to revisit the time-tested common sense that one should live within one's means.”

To make sure that there is no ambiguity in what Deng is saying, the headline to his short analysis reads “Bring some sense of global responsibility to brinkmanship-obsessed Washington.” Apart from asking the US to engage in “an in-depth self-examination”, Deng reminds America that “the ugliest part of the saga is that the well-being of many other countries is also in the impact zone when the donkey and the elephant fight.” The donkey being the most recognizable emblem of Obama’s Democratic Party and the elephant being that of the Republican Party.

Objectively, everything that Deng says is correct. Merely because it is coming from China, a place which has a direct vested interest in America’s economic fortunes, both in their ascendancy and their decline, does not make it of questionable value.

My friend and fellow journalist ( and now a Pakistan scholar) Andy McCord had once quoted the popular Sanskrit maxim “Vinash kaley viprit buddhi” to the crusty Indian politician Devi Lal in the early 1990s. Perhaps Andy should call his few politician friends in Washington and cite the maxim. Incidentally, the maxim means that one’s mind goes out of whack when faced with destruction.

If you are lucky enough, try Spotify

Spotify player (www.spotify.com)

Ever since Google + Project failed to invite me to its select list of participants for its new social networking site I have been looking for a suitable way to slight it. I think I have found it in Spotify. Here is what appears to be the world’s best free and legal music site that does not tie you down to listening a track for a microsecond before asking you to buy it.

Also, Spotify is song-specific. Let me explain how. As it usually happens, yesterday I was practically paralyzed repeatedly singing a random Hindi song, this time  ‘Do nainon mein aansoo bhare hein neendiya kaise samay (How do I sleep with my tear-filled eyes?)” (Lata Mangeshkar, Gulzar, R D Burman and ‘Khushboo’).

Later in the day when I was checking my email messages, I spot one from Spotify saying this:  “Well, the wait is over. Here’s your invite to enjoy Spotify for free. We’d like to reward your patience with instant access to over 15
million tracks. Let the music begin.”

So with the unseemly eagerness of a generally ignored sophomore whom the most stunning blond in the class had deliberately brushed past, I downloaded Spotify instantly. Although its player’s user interface is very reminiscent of Apple’s iTunes, two immediate things stand out—how instantly the chosen song starts playing and the terrific sound quality.That Spotify can offer any of its 15-million strong collection completely and legally free is because top music companies such as Sony, Universal, EMI and Warner have signed on to this potentially history-making site. I am told Spotify is very big in Europe and it has just entered the United States.

There are three services that Spotify offers, two premium and one free. The two premium ones priced at $ 9.99 (Premium) and $ 4.99 (Unlimited) come free of ads unlike the free one which I have. It has ads that come up from time to time but then that’s the price one pays for being a cheapskate. The only catch with being a freeloader is that you have to be invited, either by Spotify or by someone who has a premium subscription.

One cool feature that Spotify offers is that it recognizes your collections in iTunes and Windows Media Player. You can see the same playlist from both and play.

Every once in a while when I fire up the player it reminds me how lucky I am to be among the chosen few in the US to have been invited. So push my luck further, I typed R D Burman in its search. At once it listed scores of his songs. I scrolled down to see what the list contained and found one that read ‘Tomate Amate Dekha Hoy Chillo’. I knew it was in Bengali and also knew that RD had composed many of his hit Hindi songs first in Bengali. I clicked on this one out of curiosity. As luck would have it, the song turned out to be the Bengali version of ‘Do nainon mein..”

So as far as I am concerned not only does Spotify work but works with embarrassing efficiency. I am sure I can find faults with it if I choose to but it would be uncivil to question someone who offers you a musical treasure free, not to mention without any possibility of jail time. I think if I stroke Spotify any more, it might just come. So let me conclude here.

The drool of Indian media on Khar’s Hermes Birkin

India’s Foreign Minister S M krishna, left, and his Pakistan vis-à-vis Hina Rabbani Khar (PIc: India’s Ministry of External Affairs)

I am guessing that by now the Indian media has stopped slobbering over Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar. I have been told that it might take Khar a couple of days to get all the drool off her Hermes Birkin bag, Roberto Cavalli sunglasses and white pearls. She can always send a cleaning bill to the Times of India.

My sense from reading some of the accounts is that Khar’s accessories alone would have been enough to pay back a small part of Pakistan’s sovereign debt. For instance, the handbag could have cost her a minimum of $7,000, which is supposed to be the base price for a no-frills Hermes Birkin. Computing on the basis of her feudal background and stay in the U.S., it is unlikely that she would have gone for just the basic version. (See the picture below)

 

If India-Pakistan bilateral relations are like a marriage that has run out of its charms and rewards and overrun by a jaded disillusionment, then there is no particular harm in adding a dose of glamor and good looks, both of which Khar brought in ample supply. That is just as well because the two countries have tried hard knuckle diplomacy for decades and have not really gotten anywhere. Perhaps it is time to look for ways out-chic each other.

Pakistan has kept its side of the bargain by appointing Khar. It is time for India to significantly up the glamor quotient of its foreign minister by appointing a matching figure in place of S M Krishna. One means no disrespect to the seasoned politician but at 79, life does leave you with a lot of wear and tear. Also, how commonplace is it for a 79-year-old man to carry an Hermes Birkin bag and wear a Roberto Cavalli and wear white pearls?

Independently, Krishna does have a not so well-publicized reputation of being a natty dresser himself. I suspect he bought a new shirt and a tie just for his talks with Hina Rabbani Khar.

And now, if I may engage in a completely unfounded body language analysis based on just this one picture. If you look at the the close-up of the two ministers’ handshake in the picture below, it is clear that it is firm and self-assured on both sides. Although the veins on Krishna’s hands seem to have swollen up indicating some strain, the fact that his index finger has a slight hook and is raised means that he must have tired to be in control of the meeting. However, at the same time Khar’s thumb is positioned such that it indicates that its possessor is not going to yield her ground easily.

Come to think of it, in this close-up it is hard to tell if one of the hands is that of a woman. To quote the great philosopher of our time, Seinfeld, “She has manhands.” But that is a minor quibble given her overall effect.

A quick look back on 20 years of economic reform

Twenty years ago in July, 1991,India was practically bankrupt. For the first time in its history it was about to default on its sovereign debt obligations. Its foreign exchange reserves had depleted to a level where it would not have been able pay its import bill for more than three weeks.

The country’s foreign exchange reserves stood at Rs. 4,388 crores which at the 1991 exchange rate of about 18 rupees to a dollar amounted to less than $250 million. I was told it was about $100 million. These days the ten richest Indians carry more foreign exchange in their pockets than that in case they feel a sudden urge to buy jets for their wives. (Obvious literary exaggeration.)

Its gold had been mortgaged as a collateral and its banks had seen an unprecedented run on their deposits by non-resident Indians who cleaned out their accounts amid fears that the country was going under. The Gulf War of August, 1990- February, 1991 had ensured that the oil prices were out of control and India’s oil import bill had increased by 50 percent to about $6 billion.

As if all of this was not enough, India had to evacuate 112,000 Indians working in the Gulf because of the war waged by the US-led and UN-mandated coalition forces. Remittances from the Middle East, which had been one of the most important sources of foreign exchange, had dried up.

In short, India was fucked. (Pardon the scientific expression that we  economists use.) From that situation to now, when The New York Times today carries a largely flattering profile of the Ahmedabad-based Gautam Adani, it has been an undeniable turn around. Adani, who is the sixth richest Indian, has a fortune of $10 billion, which is 40 times more than the country’s foreign exchange reserves in 1991. If someone had told the 29-year-old Adani then that he would be where he is today, he would have fallen off his chair laughing.

As the Times’ Jim Yardley and Vikas Bajaj report, the country has 55 billionaires who between them are worth $250 billion.

However, as it always happens in India, as much as one has a reason to feel good about the progress made over the last 20 years, one has a thousand times more compelling reason to feel depressed. There are more than 500 million people in the country for whom life forever remains mortgaged. Yesterday, while listening to the car radio, it was strange to hear Prime Minister Manmohan Singh saying something to the effect that “if a friendly country” was offering help (meaning Britain giving India $1.5 billion dollars in aid) he had no problem accepting it. Obviously, Dr. Singh is not the one to stand on false prestige.

While a lot has changed, what may not have changed all that much is the business-politician dynamic. On the question of the political patronage that he enjoys from Gujarat Chief Minister the Times quotes Adani as saying, “You cannot put up infrastructure or a larger project without the blessing and active support of the state government. You have to work along with the government, whoever the chief minister is, from whichever party he is.”

That reminds me of what Dhirubhai Ambani once told me, unusually in Hindi, “Hum to kisi ko bhi salaam marega business ke vaaste. (I will humor anyone for the sake of business.)”

Hina Rabbani Khar comes to Delhi

Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar (Pic: Courtesy, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Pakistan)

Less than a week after she was formally sworn in as Pakistan’s first woman and youngest ever foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar is in New Delhi, face to face with arguably the most challenging aspect of her assignment—talking to India.

For the 34-year-old Khar having to deal with her 79-year-old Indian vis-à-vis S M Krishna may feel like entering a time warp. It is tempting to feel particularly optimistic on account of Khar’s youth and believe that she may bring an approach to India-Pakistan bilateral relations that is unencumbered by historic animosities. But when one is also deeply mindful of the fact that no Pakistani foreign minister comes to India without the shadow of the Pakistani military-intelligence establishment following right behind.

It would also be useful to remember that Khar is a product of her country’s deeply entrenched feudalism and notwithstanding her postgraduate degree in hospitality and management from the University of Massachusetts she is bound to have been tutored in the ways of the Pakistani elite. As Manish Chand of the IANS reports, “Khar comes from a wealthy feudal family in southern Punjab and owns Lahore's posh Polo Lounge, a haunt of the rich and the powerful. Her father is a large landowner from Muzaffargarh. Her uncle Ghulam Mustafa Kar was the subject of "My Feudal Lord", a biting account of patriarchal society in Pakistan penned by his fifth wife Tehmina Durrani.”

Khar is most certainly not someone who has had to defy the harrowing social, cultural and economic odds that any ordinary Pakistani, particularly a woman, faces. Her background is as much an asset as it is a liability when it comes to dealing with India. Even if she has a mind all her own, it is debatable whether in the current climate of palpable bilateral suspicion she can chart a truly independent course.

When it comes to India-Pakistan relations, there is no alternative but to view them through the prism of unfounded optimism. Once you do that, Hina Rabbani Khar looks greatly promising.

Separately, one looks at Khar and one thinks next Benazir Bhutto. All the trimmings and trappings of a successful political career seem to be in place. She is on the right trajectory to eventually become her country’s top leader if she plays her cards well.

Desultory by disposition

Arundhati Roy says she can read a piece of writing and know within "three paragraphs" whether the writer is serious or not. In my case, she would not even need three paragraphs to make that judgment. A couple of lines should tell anyone reasonably discerning that I am by disposition desultory.

But then I am not a writer by any measure. I am merely someone who strings a few words together in the faint hope that they might make some sense to someone, somewhere. More often than not I do not even think it necessary for a piece of writing to make sense as long as it is readable.

Roy believes that as a writer you have to be part of a cause."You are not somebody on the outside, commenting," she told Sophie Elmhirst of New Statesman which has published a long profile of the writer-activist. Roy wants to be on the inside and believes it is expected of writers to be on the inside.

“In her view, writers should be part of the struggle. Roy deplores what she describes as a "terrible shift" that has occurred in the perception of both the purpose of writing and the position of a writer in society - how the writer is presumed to be a fringe player, a mere observer,” Elmhirst writes.

Somewhere hidden in those words is the implication that she herself meets the high standards that she has set for any writer to be a serious writer. Reading Roy’s comment that she can tell within three paragraphs how serious the writer is, I was reminded of something V S Naipaul said recently. He said he can read a piece of writing and tell "within a paragraph or two” whether it is by a woman or not. Of course, Naipaul’s main point was that there is no woman writer whom he considers his literary match or equal. It is no surprise that he does not think of any woman writer rising to that exalted position.

If there is any similarity between what Naipaul and Roy have said, it is in their ability to decide within three paragraphs at most the strength and character of a writer. I do not for a moment think that I would ever rise to a level where serious journalists would feel compelled to profile me and ask what I think of this, that and the other. I would tell them that I do not consider life so consequential as to examine it in such fine detail.

Note: Today’s post is an example of my comment at the top that I am desultory by disposition.

All poet Ifti Nasim

Iftikhar Nasim

It became customary to describe Ifti Nasim as an openly gay Pakistani Muslim poet living in Chicago. The way I saw him everything about him, except the fact of him being a poet, was either incidental or extraneous or both.Ifti Nasim was all poet and everything he did in his life was an extension of that sensibility.

“Yaar shayar hun. Usi nazariye se sab dekhta hun (I am a poet and I view everything from that standpoint)," is how Ifti would describe himself. “Aur jo bhi karta hun (Whatever I do), including doing men, I do so with the passion of a poet,” he once told me as he burst out into his somewhat high pitch guffaw.

I was introduced to Ifti by fellow journalist and friend Ashok Easwaran over five years ago. So somehow it seems fitting that it was Ashok who called me yesterday afternoon to ask, “Are you coming for Ifti’s funeral?” It was only on Friday afternoon that Ashok had informed me that Ifti had had a stroke and the prognosis did not look good. Ashok and I were planning to jointly appear on Ifti’s radio show Sargam most likely this evening at a studio in downtown Chicago.

When I first met Ifti, I was reminded of a question that waiters in London restaurants ask, “Sparkling or still?” to find out whether you want carbonated water or just plain water. Ifti was like sparkling water, forever effervescent. He had an expression that always suggested of an impending banter. More often than not he did not let you down. Whenever the three of us got together, which was rather seldom, our conversation would leap from the sublime to the profane to the ridiculous to the profound.

“Yaar, yehi to zindgi ka sarmaya hai. Kabhi shayari, kabhi gaali, Kabhi haasil, kabhi khayali, (This is what life’s sum total is. Sometimes poetry, sometimes profanity, Sometimes real, sometimes imagined,” I once told him. Ifti’s response was, “Maynak, kyun aur nahi likhte ho? (Maynak, why don’t you write more?”) Like of a lot of people from Punjab, both India and Pakistan, Ifti too happily and unselfconsciously mauled my name from Mayank to Maynak.

A prolific poet and writer, Ifti said he discovered poetry as a boy of 12 when one of his cats went missing. “Billi to kho gayi lekin shayari mil gayi (I lost the cat but found poetry),” is how he put it. A dandy dresser, who turned sartorial conventions upside down, Ifti was a genuine humanist who deeply cared about the human condition. Never unmindful of and forever grateful to America, Ifti said he discovered his creative and personal freedom after coming to Chicago.

A deeply committed anti-war and human rights activist, Ifti was also a quiet worker for the cause of his own Pakistani community. “The orthodox among the Pakistani community in Chicago did view me with wariness and even hostility initially but after they saw my involvement in helping the local Muslims in the aftermath of 9/11, they learned to look beyond it,” Ifti used to say.

Ifti had that rare combination of being a great raconteur who had amassed so many great stories and anecdotes. For instance, he once told me quoting the great ghazal singer Mehdi Hassan that the best way to get that deep tone in one’s singing voice was to smoke cigarettes.

Ifti was also gifted in the art of making friends. There was something to his demeanor that spoke easy amiability. But that could also be a bit misleading because he could just as easily filter out those he could not suffer.

He described himself as a post-modern poet whose idiom was not the traditional Urdu poetry type. He summed up his life’s philosophy in these two lines:

“Jo khuda par nahi, insaan pe rakhta hai yekin

Dil ko achchha laga us shakhs ka kafir hona”

(The one who trusts humans more than god

The heart likes that unbeliever)

Note: It is possible that my translation of the last two lines is way off the mark. Unfortunately, Ifti is not around to correct it.

Songs chasing me like playful puppies

Three Hindi songs have been chasing me like particularly playful Indian street puppies for the past few hours. (I know this is a poorly mixed metaphor but that is precisely how the image formed in my mind. And who am I to shoo away a metaphor merely because it came to me as street puppies?—Another bad one.)

Anyhow, as I was saying, these three songs popped up in my mind randomly, a few hours apart from each other. There came a time when it became impossible to decide which one I should sing to myself. So this morning I did what I always do when confronted with songs that refuse to leave me alone. I went to YouTube and Google Music India to find out some more about the songs. One was pleasantly surprised to discover that they all came from the same movie—Hum Sab Ustaad Hein (1965), composed by Laxmikant Pyarelal.

The songs are ‘Ajnabi tum jaane pehchane se lagte ho’ (Hey stranger, you seem familiar), ‘Suno jaana suno jaana mere pehloo se mat jaana’ (Listen darling, don’t leave my side) and ‘Pyaar bantate chalo’ (Keep sharing love), all written by Asad Bhopali. Some of the lyrics are admittedly cheesy but they work in the context in which they were written. It is striking how in “Suno jaana” Bhopali jumps from something utterly romantic in the first line to something utterly macabre in the next where he writes “Agar jaana to yun jaana, Juda sar tan se kar jaana (And if you ever leave, do so after beheading me).

I understand that the idea of “Juda sar tan se kar jana” is not to be taken literally but understood in terms of the intense anguish of his separation from her. Quite hilariously though, the “her” in this case is actor Sheikh Mukhtar in drag whom the character of a Parsi man, played by Kishore Kumar, is trying to woo. When Kishore Kumar says the line “Juda sar tan se” he even makes the sign as if slitting his throat. The scene makes beheading sound like great fun and something everybody should try at least once.

Laxmikant Pyarelal’s compositions are thoroughly modern for the times and his choice of instruments-- the saxophone, the drums, the bass guitar, the piano—enhances the final impact. One is particularly struck by the interlude in ‘Ajanabi’ after Kishore Kumar begins the song. It has such a modern groove to it. If I ever make a thriller, I would happily buy the rights to this song just to use that interlude.

For now, I like ‘Pyar bantate chalo” the most simply because of its uncomplicated ambition of sharing and spreading love irrespective of everything, not to mention its excellent composition. The song is partly set aboard a train, giving it an underlying rhythm that the composers use effectively. Empty your mind of cynicism for a bit and hear this song. I am pretty sure you would get up and shake a leg or two. See the video below.

 

Some day I would like to write a book about how Hindi cinema lyricists of the 1950s and 1960s so successfully infused the philosophy of easy multiculturalism in the popular discourse.

Tearing it all up for Vlad

At first it is hard to know for sure whether the video above is a Russian commercial for Apple products or a young Russian girl luring you with her perkiness. It works either way because both Apple and the girl, Diana, are smooth.

What the video really is though is a campaign for Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to be elected the country’s president again in March of 2012.

According the translation of what Diana is saying as reported by Julia Ioffe of the New Yorker magazine, it goes:

“I’ve lost my mind for a person who has changed the life of our country. He’s a good politician and a fabulous man.

He is Vladimir Putin.”

She also says, “He is beloved by millions; he is trusted. But there’s a pack of people who smear him. Perhaps they do it out of fear, perhaps out of personal weakness, because they will never be in his position.”

What she writes on the vest at the end of the video is  “Porvu za Putina” or “I’ll tear it up for Putin.” And she does.

The campaign is part of what is known as Armia Putina or the Army of Putin comprising young girls (It is almost mandatory for them to be stunning) who promise to tear it all up. This particular video, which has gone viral for obvious reasons, is likely to inspire many more in what seems like some sort of a competition happening at the Pushkin Square in Moscow today as I write this.

There is something about Putin that seems to inspire young Russian girls to cast aside their inhibitions and let it all hang out. In October last year, for instance, a calendar with girls in lacy underwear was produced as a gift for Putin on his birthday on October 7.  The girls studied journalism at the Moscow State University. Check out the picture below.The future of journalism in Russia is quite bright.

When Putin stepped down as president in 2008 because of the constitutionally mandated two term-limit, he nominated his protégé Dmitry Medvedev as his successor who obligingly named Putin as Russia’s prime minister. Putin can return to become Russia's president, this time for 12 years, if these girls can tear it all up.