South Asia Daily

As for permanence, what’s that?

Author Jonathan Franzen (Pic: http://us.macmillan.com/author/jonathanfranzen)

In calling ebooks “damaging to society” celebrated author Jonathan Franzen is making the classic mistake of confusing the carrier with the content.

"Someone worked really hard to make the language just right, just the way they wanted it. They were so sure of it that they printed it in ink, on paper. A screen always feels like we could delete that, change that, move it around. So for a literature-crazed person like me, it's just not permanent enough,” Franzen has been quoted as saying at the Hay festival in Cartagena, Colombia.

At the core of Franzen’s grouse is that ebooks do not seem permanent enough for him. “I think, for serious readers, a sense of permanence has always been part of the experience. Everything else in your life is fluid, but here is this text that doesn’t change.”

These are all valid responses of an imaginative writer except that they are not because ebooks are a sort of PDF files that cannot be altered by the reader, nor can they be erased by rubbing across the touchscreen. I understand that Franzen is not being literal but literary when he says all that but still it is important to point out the distinction. Ebooks are as permanent as anything else on this planet is, meaning they are impermanent.

More than anything else I cannot comprehend Franzen’s objection to ebooks on the ground that they are alterable. He probably means that unlike paper books, which once set in cold print, will remain as they are until the elements destroy them, ebooks are vulnerable. If his concern is that content might be lost or changed, I think it is unfounded.

Perhaps Franzen’s comments stem from his overall wariness about technology. The Guardian says that the author seals his computer’s ethernet port to prevent himself from accessing the internet when he is in the midst of his writing. That’s a charming little quirk but he can try something simpler like taking the ethernet cable off or, better still, not going online. Having an internet connection does not make it mandatory for people to go and stay online.

I have never quite understood the critics of technology because anything anyone does after being born—not to mention even while being born—is a result of some technology or another. The fact that Franzen’s damning disapproval of a form of technology got disseminated so quickly and became so widespread, something I am sure he approves of, is entirely a result of the very technology he may find damaging. Ironic, is it not?

Ebooks are merely a method of distribution on various devices. In and of themselves they control nothing. It is still the author and the editor and the publisher who call the shots. As for permanence, what’s that?

Sheikh Newt Gingrich Chilli

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich (Photo: www.newt.org)

All politicians are, to some extent, powered by raw self-belief. Then there is former Speaker and Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich who feasts on it.

You might have noticed that very frequently Gingrich spreads his arms to make a point. That is a subconscious behavioral attribute of someone who rides wave after wave of self-belief. He is a surfer on the ocean of ambition. However, the boundaries between positive thinking, delusion and lunacy are rather porous.

During a speech in Cocoa, Florida, on January 28, Gingrich said, “By the end of my second term we will have the first permanent base on the moon, and it will be American.”

Of all the grandiosity that Gingrich should be slammed for, his proposal to colonize the moon should be the least slam-worthy. It is at least entertaining.

His statement is loaded with so much presumption and grandiosity that I cannot help but applaud him. When you analyze his statement, you are struck by several things in it. To begin with, he has concluded that he will be the nominee of the Republican Party. That is presumption number one.

Presumption number two is the belief that he would defeat President Barack Obama. Even he knows that that is easier said than achieved. Presumption number three is that he would be so good in his first term that he would win a second term.

Simultaneously, there are many other presumptions that relate to putting together an intensely complex plan to colonize the moon with all its attendant technological pieces in place before his second term ends. There are also those presumptions that relate to the cost of such a mammoth undertaking, not to mention its profound political implications. And yet Gingrich has pole-vaulted over all of them to promise a colony on the moon.

Of course, as a president he can always edit that ambition and be content with a small shed somewhere on the moon and declare it to be the first step towards building a base to be inhabited by Americans at some future date.

There is a character in north Indian folklore called Sheikh Chilli to describe someone who dreams up grandiose schemes. It is meant to describe someone who inhabits a world of fantasy where castles are not only built in the air but occupied. I am on a shaky ground about the precise origin of the legend of Sheikh Chilli but this is the one I grew up with. So I am sticking to it. Gingrich reminds me of that.

Gingrich has said that once the base is built some 13,000 Americans can shift there and petition the US Congress to become an American state. What it means is that at its heart,  Gingrich’s grandiosity seems merely about extraterrestrial territorial expansion, which to my mind, is a rather petty ambition.

That said, I think a human colony on the moon is an eminently laudable objective.

India unlikely to reduce oil imports from Iran

U.S. and European sanctions will not prevent India, the world’s fourth largest consumer, from importing oil from Iran, its Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee says.

As Washington ratchets up pressure on countries around the world, particularly large consumers of oil, to cut down their imports from Iran, New Delhi is in no position to oblige. Some 12 percent India’s oil imports comes from Iran.

"It is not possible for India to take any decision to reduce the imports from Iran drastically, because among the countries which can provide the requirement of the emerging economies, Iran is an important country amongst them," Mukherjee told a news conference here in Chicago, after concluding a short, day and a half long visit. I was at that news conference and was preempted by a fellow journalist in my question about the implications for India of the Iran-U.S. tensions over Tehran’s threat to blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

It is a delicate balancing act for India, sandwiched as it is between its ever rising oil demand and considerations of geostrategic ties with the United States. 2012 being a presidential election year in America, President Barack Obama not just has to be tough on Iran but has to be seen as tough. India’s continuing  of its Iranian oil import does not significantly weaken the sanctions but it does have a salutary impact in so much as the world’s largest nuclear armed democracy chooses to do business with Tehran.

In terms of India’s broad economic outlook Mukherjee acknowledged that the economic growth is expected to slow down to seven percent this year compared to 8.5 percent last year. Although most major economies would not only accept seven percent but even celebrate it, in the Indian context it is regarded as low because it has averaged over 8.5 percent over the last decade and there were projections it could hit the double digit mark until the global economic meltdown of 2008.

An advisory on a late posting

In keeping with my jetsetting lifestyle as a journalist (not true at all), I have to leave for downtown Chicago early morning (totally true) today.

Those who may be waiting with bated breath to read what I have written (not true at all), I would counsel patience for a few more hours.

Of disembodied voices and masquerades

Terry Gross, the iconic host of NPR’s signature interview show ‘Fresh Air’ (Pic: Will Ryan, www.npr.org)

Have you noticed how a disembodied radio voice almost invariably fails to live up to one’s feverishly imagined image of its possessor? For me it began in my childhood with the two most pervasive voices on India’s airwaves for generations—those of singers Lata Mangeshkar and Mohammed Rafi.

If memory serves me right, I think I saw the pictures of the two more than 20 years after I had so intuitively known their voices. The mystique was broken that day. I had by no means imagined Mangeshkar and Rafi to be the world’s most beautiful people. In fact, beauty was not even part of my imagination, even though I had a very definite expectation what they ought to look like on the basis of their voices.

However, the chasm between what the two really looked like and what I had wanted them to look like was enormous. It was as if I had been swindled by their faces long after I had been seduced by their voices. Of course, that reaction was entirely a reflection on me rather than Mangeshkar and Rafi. When I say the mystique was broken what I am actually saying is that a disembodied voice is poor clay to build a whole person out of.

I never met Rafi but did get to interview Mangeshkar once, thanks entirely to my friend Shireesh Kanekar. When she asked “Chaha ghenar ka? (Will you have tea?)” in Marathi, the voice behind that banal question sounded so arrestingly familiar that I looked around the room to make sure that it was not coming from some invisible source.

Since then there have been other voices which have not matched their mental images. There was the voice of Ameen Sayani, for decades India’s most familiar host conducting its most enduringly popular radio hit parade. It would be safe to say that Sayani was the voice that arbitrated popular Hindi cinema music. I met the man close to 20 years after I had grown up listening to his voice. When he greeted me at his office in Bombay in the mid 1980s, for a moment I thought he was a mimic channeling Sayani and not Sayani himself. It was as if some strange man was lipsynching Ameen Sayani.

Another voice, which has mercifully remained a voice after decades, was that of Shameem Qureishi, a broadcaster on the All India Radio’s Urdu Service. I don’t know what he looks like to this day, which is just as well because who knows what might happen to the mystique around his voice if I found out what he looks like?

Yet another radio voice that has become a subject of that feverish imagining in the last five years belongs to Terry Gross, the iconic host of NPR’s signature interview show ‘Fresh Air.’ Hers was not an image that was fully formed in my mind like those of Mangeshkar, Rafi and Sayani but my mind had begun to extrapolate a look from the voice. Then I saw her on ‘The Colbert Report’ the other day. The mystique was radically rearranged. It was not broken because it had not yet been fully formed.

There is a common underlying theme to my reactions to all the disembodied voices. I feel as if the person out of whom a particular voice is coming is a masquerade. So when I saw Terry Gross talking to Stephen Colbert I had this weird sense of having been tricked.

None of what I feel has anything to do with the people I am talking about. It has everything to do with the way my mind works.

Some ideas for Jaipur Literature Festival, 2013

Given my unique standing in the world of literature, journalism, security and graphic art I have designed a possible logo for The Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF), 2013. It is still early days but the one above could make the cut.

I am also suggesting that the organizers lay down the following conditions for participating authors and panelists.

It is mandatory for authors and panelists to carry a/an:

* Reinforced steel helmet

* Bulletproof vest

* Firearm

* Attorney

* Olympic grade running shoes

The order of the conditions above is not random but very carefully thought through.  If the first two do not work, try the third, failing which turn to the fourth and, if everything fails, just run. We learned that in the festival that just concluded some authors exercised the last option first which was a bad  idea, not to mention an embarrassing one.

The festival authorities should set up a store at the entrance of the venue to sell JLF branded helmets, vests, firearms, running shoes and attorneys. To make the merchandise attractive, the festival should offer early registration discount. The money earned from the sale of the branded merchandise can help minimize the festival’s dependence on corporate sponsors whose balls can be easily twisted by the government.

Additionally, the festival organizers should require a disclosure from all those who are planning to read passages from works banned in India to bring their own handcuffs to save the local police the trouble to bring so many.

This is just the first draft of what can be done. I propose to have a more comprehensive blueprint ready soon. I will not be able to share this for reasons of client confidentiality.

A few uncalled for observations on January 26

(Left to Right) Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, India’s President Pratibha Patil and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the annual Republic Day Parade on January 26 in New Delhi (Pic: The Press Information Bureau of India)

On India’s 63rd Republic Day today, a few uncalled for observations.

As I see the picture above I am paralyzed by an utterly frivolous urge. Let India and Thailand exchange prime ministers, Manmohan Singh for Yingluck Shinawatra, even if it is for a short while. I hardly need to tell you why but I will.

The 45-year-old Shinawatra fits the Indian demographic so much better when you consider that there are 550 million Indians under the age 25. At 79, Dr. Singh is several generations removed from the aspirations of nearly half of the country’s population.

It might also help to have a president whose handshake is not limp. See the picture below showing Shinawatra’s hand on the left and Patil’s on the right. It almost feels as if Patil is palming off a blob of play doh to Shinawatra. Incidentally, Dr. Singh has a similar handshake.

While I am on the subject, India’s Defence Minister A K Antony is in dire need of sartorial rescue by the US Navy Seal team 6. If you don’t believe me see Antony’s picture below.

India’s Defence Minister A K Antony

A lot of Indian politicians labor under the impression that they look handsome in that Himachali headgear of the kind Antony is wearing. Most of them look like clowns that circuses superannuated.

And finally, I think Dr. Singh can do with some animation in his public engagements. If you don’t believe me, see the picture below.

Prime Minister Singh

Give war of words a chance

A war of words has broken out between the US and Iran. The US fired question marks and exclamation marks with occasional dashes and hash signs even as Iran shot back a barrage of semicolons,comas, hyphens and full stops. There was an occasional diplomatic exchange over syntactical correctness but mostly it was an explosion of bombastic words.

Early reports about casualties were unclear but eyewitnesses spoke of many  fractured and fragmented sentences strewn along the border. Several dictionaries were standing by to receive badly wounded words for emergency surgeries. Synonyms, a sort of national reserve guards, were on the ready to replace the wounded and antonyms were being dressed up to counter Iran’s phraseology.

While most of the exchange was conducted in English in keeping with the Geneva Convention, Tehran craftily employed its ancient war tactic of waylaying the enemy by using some complex Farsi phrases. War experts were surprised that Iran would use its choicest weapons so early in the conflict but that was attributed to their new war strategy to overwhelm the adversary early.

Unprepared for the rarely used weapon of Farsi, the US forces had to go into a strategic retreat, reload its arsenal with Google Translation and return. What was expected to be a brutal ambush, in fact, turned out to be surprisingly gentle as the translation revealed that Iran was actually using Saadi’s more spiritual poetry.

I can go on about the war of words but I suppose you get the drift. I think the world should try war of words more often than it does whenever countries have serious disagreements. Words don’t die and they certainly don’t cost. So why not?

I nearly told you so, twice

Far be it for me to say I told you so but I almost did tell you so.Not once but twice in a span of four days.

My January 20 blog said this about the threat to author Salman Rushdie's life in India. "I hope the intelligence reports are not just an expedient device that someone in the bureaucratic establishment is using to get around this ticklish issue. Perhaps that someone reasoned that if Rushdie were to be warned of a “credible” plot to assassinate him, would he still take the chance and visit for the greater glory of the freedom of speech?" Well, that earns me some bragging rights to at least say, "I nearly told you so."

There are already news reports in India that the threat was manufactured to keep Rushdie from the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF).

Then yesterday I wrote what I thought was a spoof about fictional Mumbai mobsters planning a hit on a fictional author by shutting down his video address at an event. I was careful enough not to make it an obvious reference to Rushdie by describing the fictional author, in the immortal words of Pistool Ganja, as “chusa hua aam” or sucked out/shriveled up mango. Rushdie is still like a ripe Kashmiri apple. So no similarity there.

This morning I read the news that Rushdie’s video address to the JLF was canceled in the face of a mob of angry Muslims threatening violence. One of them was quoted by the IANS as saying, “He (Rushdie) is a criminal writer as far as Muslims are concerned. He has insulted Prophet Mohammed and there is no way we will let him speak even if he is doing so from abroad. There will be trouble if the speech by Rushdie goes ahead. Muslims are never afraid of dying.”

So what is going on is that real life is writing the next plot of Rushdie’s novel. All that he has to do is report what is going on. There is enough magic realism and the theater of the absurd in it.

Speaking of the theater of the absurd, what Rajdeep Sardesai, a high profile news anchor (Aren’t they all high profile?), tried to do was priceless. During a debate on the Rushdie visit controversy, Rajdeep tried to end his show on a high note. Among the four panelists were Asaduddin Owaisi, a Member of Parliament representing Hyderabad, and writer and freedom of speech activist Ruchir Joshi. Before I quote the exchange, here is a bit of a background on the two men in the context of the controversy.

Owaisi has found in the embarrassing controversy an embarrassment of political riches to assert himself as the new uncompromising voice of the Muslim community. He seems to have succeeded. And Joshi has cast himself on the other side, having controversially read excerpts from ‘The Satanic Verses’, Rushdie’s 1988 book which is banned in India. It is hardly surprising that the two men can’t stand each other.

So Rajdeep, in keeping with the highest tradition of journalism, tried to extract an invitation for a sumptuous Hyderabadi meal from Owaisi to Joshi on national television.

Rajdeep: Will you invite Ruchir Joshi…you you cook some of the best Hyderabadi food I know? Is it possible to bring you and Ruchir Joshi together and resolve this?

Owaisi: No, I am extremely sorry Rajdeep, I cannot invite to my house a person who blasphemes my prophet. The lessons that can be learnt from this debate is please be within the confines of law…Criticize Islam, you have all the right but there is a difference between blasphemy and criticism… You cannot question my identity in the garb of your liberalism.”

While Owaisi was smacking down social graces Joshi’s hand reflexively went up to his forehead as if to scratch an non-existent itch. It was an involuntary gesture of exasperation.

Joshi responded saying this: India is a vast and plural country where 90 percent of the people can’t read. We have waited 23 years to hope that some kind of reasonable attitude will be shown by the extremists. We are now done with patience Chetan (Bhagat). We have tried to hope that they would see sense…We would continue to our non-violent protest. If the law is bad, it will go. New, better laws will be replaced through our efforts and we will continue to lodge our nonviolent protest and whatever that entails we are all willing to do. Okay?”

So okay. There you have it. Both sides are intransigent and therefore perfect for the hungry 24/7 broadcast news beast.

On a slightly trivial note, India is not 90 percent illiterate as Joshi said. The general literacy rate is 75.06%, 82.14% for men and 65.46% for women, according to the 2011 census. Even if you factor in political exaggeration it is not less than 70% overall. Even in 1947, when India became an independent country, the literacy rate was 12%, which makes the illiteracy then lower than 90%.

That said, literacy does not necessarily translate into education, knowledge and enlightenment.

Ganja Pistoolwaley plans a hit

Ganja Pistoolwaley a.k.a. Pistool Ganja nervously pulled his underwear wedged deep inside his buttocks. Unexpected phone calls from his boss Raqeeb Tadipar had that effect on him.

Pistoolwaley stood up whenever Tadipar called. Unlike in the past, with video phones Tadipar would know instantly if his underlings were sufficiently deferential when he called. He didn’t like his men sitting around because he thought that made them slow on the draw.

It was only during extreme emergencies when Tadibhai (as Raqeeb was known) would call himself. The hit Tadibhai was calling Ganja about involved a high profile author.

“Han Tadibhai. Mein khada hai na. Mein to kabhi kidhar baithta hai?” Ganja said with insincere obsequiousness. (Yes, Tadibhai I am standing up. Do I ever sit down?)

“Saaley, yeh video phone hai. Mein dekh sakta hai. Abhi supari ka photu SMS kiyela hai,” Tadibhai said. (This is a video phone. I can see you. I have just SMSed a picture of the hit).

Ganja: “Han bhai mila na. Dekha. Boley to aadmi to chusey hue aam ki mafik lagta hai.” (Got it. The man looks like a shriveled up mango.)

Tadibhai: “To yeh kaun sa chikna hero hai. Sala kitaab likhta rehta hai.” (He is no slick movie star. The bastard writes books).

Ganja: “To likhne do na bhai. Apney ko kya karne ka hai? Apan log kidhar padh sakta hai?” (So let him write.What do we care? We are illiterate anyway.)

Tadipar: “Arey who sab mereku mat sikha. Aaj kal teri zabaan pistul se zyada chalti hai) (Don’t teach me all that. These days you talk more than your pistol.)

Sensing Tadibhai’s irritation, Ganja immediately corrected himself. “Tadibhai, mein to aise hi gammat kiya. Aap ne bola aur sala writer dola.” (Tadibhai, I am kidding. You say the word and the writer is gone).

Tadibhai: “Arey Pistool teri ma ki usko dolane ka nahi hai rey. Woh video pe aa ke kuch bhashan dene wala hai. Uska bhashan rokna hai.” (Hey Pistool, he is not to be bumped off. He is giving a video speech. That speech should not happen.)

Ganja: “Boley to zinda rakhne ka par acting nahi karne ka” (That means he may live but not act)

Tadibhai: “Ab ghusi baat tere bheje mein goli ka tarha. Yeh hona mangta hai.” (Now sense has entered your brain like a bullet. This needs to happen)

Tadibhai’s menacing face went off Ganja’s phone. Ganja placed a call, also a video call, to his trusted tech support Chandu Ghaslet.

Chandu stood up as he answered the call. “Han Pistoolbhai. Mujhe kyun yaad kiya?) (Yes Pistool, how come you remembered me?)

Ganja: “Yeh address likh. Idhar kal ek video bhashan hai. Who bandh kara.” (Take this address. There is a video speech scheduled there tomorrow. Stop it.)

Chandu Ghaslet, who hardly ever figured in any of the exciting hits that his gang carried out, was thrilled to have been called. Naturally, he felt he needed to make this his best job.

Ghaslet: “Video bhashan matlab bandwidth bada zyada hoga. Mein 30 mein se 15 frame drop kara dunga. Sala breakdance ke jaisa lagega woh writer.” (Video speech means high bandwidth. I can drop 15 of the 30 frames. He would be so jerky he would look like a breakdancer).

Ganja: “Ey Ghaslet, baat sun le. Band wand kuchch nahi. Udhar ja, do kan ke neeche baja aur cable kaat dal.” (Hey Ghaslet, listen to me. Forget bandwidth. Go there, thrash a couple of them and cut the cable).

Ganja disconnected.

So now we wait to see what happens.

 

Note: Excuse the inordinate use of the Mumbai street lingo. I had no choice because that’s how these tough guys talk.