South Asia Daily

Journalists who help quotes become smarter and pithier

The cover of Jonah Lehrer’s book published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt which is now being recalled

Jonah Lehrer is not the world’s most famous journalist. In light of recent events in his life, some might say that he is not even a journalist, but that is a matter of opinion.

Lehrer has just had to resign as a staff writer for the New Yorker after admitting that he falsified quotes. And quotes of not just anybody but those of music legend Bob Dylan.

The quotes in question are part of Lehrer’s  best-selling book, ‘Imagine: How Creativity Works.’ Those feeling outraged have no reason to feel so because the title of the books is self-explanatory. Which part of ‘Imagine: How Creativity Works’ do they not understand? First it is about imagining and then about creativity and finally about making them work together.

The book is supposed to be an exploration into the science of creativity and Lehrer thought why not carry out an experiment in the book. Unfortunately for him, a fellow journalist had a more accurate definition of accuracy and he challenged Lehrer who has now come clean on his falsification.

Jonah Lehrer (A video grab from www.jonnahlehrer.com)

Lehrer has a dream academic resume. The 31-year-old is a graduate from Columbia in neuroscience with a masters from Oxford. He is also a Rhodes scholar. There is something about Lehrer that screams the New Yorker. He was hired as the magazine’s staff writer in June.

In keeping with the highest tradition of this blog I did some quick forensics about Lehrer before writing about him. His personal website has a video trailer of his this very book where he says, “Creativity is taking two things that existed before and connecting them in an entirely new way.” If this is not an uncanny foreshadowing of what he has now admitted to, then what is? I do not know exactly how he has falsified the Dylan quotes but going by the news stories about the subject, it does not sound that different from what he says in this video clip.

In a statement after the falsification controversy Lehrer was quoted by The Guardian as saying, “The quotes either did not exist or represented improper combinations of previously existing quotes.” Compare this with what he says in the video clip about connecting previously existing things in a new way.

Helping quotes become smarter and pithier than they really are is not a particularly unknown phenomenon in the world of journalism across the world. Journalists often do so without realizing it and they also do so to fit a preconceived narrative. Working behind this practice is the crafty logic that such journalists follow which says that almost no one will ever disown a smart or pithy quote attributed to them even if it did not come from them.

My approach has been to quote people verbatim, including their linguistic deficiencies, to ensure that I have not indulged in even a subtle makeover. A lot of people I have interviewed over the decades have disliked how they sound in cold print and complained. There was a particular movie star in the 1980s who was so unhappy at the way she came across in cold print that she had her PR man call me to compel me to retract everything. I said it was exactly what she had said and I had it on tape. To which he said with delightful shamelessness, “Lekin woh to aap ko theek kar lena chahiye na likhne se pehle (But you should have corrected it before writing it).” I said I was not the film star’s copy editor and put the phone down.

The point is most people do not realize that most people do not speak in a properly structured manner where what comes out is a tightly edited copy. It is conversational, informal and often undermined by poor phraseology (not unlike this blog). I do not think it is a journalist’s job to filter those out. For instance, in many politicians’ cases the simple act of quoting them faithfully would be tantamount to misquoting them because that’s what it reads like in cold print. To quote a politician is to misquote a politician. I have encountered this problem dozens and dozens of times, including once with a very high profile politician who went to become India’s prime minister. After the politician’s interview appeared his aide called to contest some of the comments. Fortunately, everything he said was on tape.

In my experience the only people who do not care about accuracy and do not retract are gangsters and their bosses. But then that is peculiar to their profession where erasing mistakes has a whole new meaning. They do not erase mistakes, they erase mistake makers.

Coming back to Lehrer, he joins a distinguished group of journalists such as Stephen Glass, formerly of The Vanity Fair, and Jayson Blair, formerly of The New York Times, both of whom had to resign under similar circumstances of having fabricated or falsified or embellished their stories. Perhaps the three can form a firm together. ‘Blair, Glass and Lehrer’ has a nice ring to it.

Earth has no vested interest in preserving itself in our best imagination

A random painting by me

I don’t think the purpose of any celestial body, particularly planets and moons, is to engender, nurture and perpetuate life.

Life may be an incidental byproduct of complex processes and fusions taking place between naturally occurring elements but I have never been convinced that it is a deliberate outcome. The notion that creating and supporting sentient life, namely you and I and everything that is alive on our own planet, is fundamental to why the earth exists is absurd. It is not as if we are the primary concern of our home planet.

I have thought about this theme for quite sometime but lately my interest has been intensified by, of all things, a particularly strong summer in America. When the trees in my yard started shedding brown leaves some weeks ago and the grass turned scraggy yellow because of the temperatures remaining steady in the 90 degrees F. it struck me that the earth has no vested interest in preserving itself in our best imagination. It is nothing but one relentlessly unstable system that is forever responding to its most unstable features at any given time. There is no grand destiny built into it.

The ease with which it can create and destroy itself in part or in whole ought to be profoundly unsettling to those who believe in the larger purpose to not just the earth but everything that surrounds us in the universe. I never believed in the school of thought that attributes a larger purpose to our existence and, as I grow older, I do even less.

The near drought-like conditions that many parts of America are experiencing merely tell me that the earthly climate does whatever it needs to to respond and adjust to the conditions prevailing at a particular point. It pays no attention to what its consequences might be for the glorious sentient life that envelops it. It can never be an equal or emotional relationship between the planet and those who live on and off it. For instance, unremittingly beautiful flowers can wither in a matter of hours because of the heat wave and the earth will be none the sadder for it.

Respect is not mutual in the earth-life equation in the sense that simply because we respect and even worship nature there is no guarantee that she will return the gesture. It is because the general time scale over which things unfold is so vast that we mistakenly attribute a degree of permanence to it all. One can always say that for all practical purposes we do live on a planet that is by and large stable in relation to individual life spans. However, there is no unique reason that in those individual life spans something enormously disruptive cannot happen which is big enough to change the course of this planet in a very real sense.

The fundamental point of this odd rumination is that the earth does what it does without any particular regard for what it may mean for sentient life. That truth has to hold everywhere in the universe as well. The destiny of the universe is not necessarily to conceive life and then do its absolute best to sustain it and ensure that it attains a higher level of existence. To put it succinctly, the universe does not give a damn about our feelings and aspirations. It does what it does because that’s all it can do.

P.S.: It would be pointless to look for anything cohesive in this little post. I just wrote it off the cuff.

Some new sports that can improve India’s medal prospects at Olympics

Here is an idea for India to improve its pathetic Olympics medals record-- a total of 20 until the 2008 Beijing games. India should say no matter what the competition is they will only play cricket and chess.

These are the only two sports, although it is seriously questionable if chess is a sport in the athletic spirit of the Olympics, that India excels in but not included in the games. India used to totally dominate field hockey but that was decades ago.

China has won more medals in the first two days of the London Olympics than India is likely to in the entire event. At the Beijing Olympics India won three medals, one gold and two bronzes. There are several reasons why Indians do not win almost any gold medal ever. They have won only one so far and that was in 2008 when Abhinav Bindra won it in the men’s 10 meter air rifle shooting.

The most plausible reason why Indians do not win gold medals is because they have so much gold sitting at home that they have no allure for it at the Olympics. “Meh, I have higher carat gold around my neck than there is in that medal. So why bother?,” seems to be the logic. They would rather buy it than win it.

Coming back to the idea of India insisting on playing only cricket and chess, it makes sense because they have culturally internalized those two, particularly cricket. Chess was, of course, invented in India some 1500 years ago.

The only form of cricket that can work in the Olympics would be a truncated version T20 or 20-20. The current version, which has the two teams playing 20 overs each, lasts three and a half hours. That is too long but not so much when you consider that there is the 250 kilometer cycling men’s road race that lasts five hours. Football games last 90 minutes. It is possible to shorten T20 into T12 and conclude it within 120 minutes.

As for chess, I don’t know much about it in terms of durations but I am sure a new rapid version could be developed to suit the ever shortening attention spans of spectators. Or the other option is to let the competition go on throughout the entire duration of the Olympics and then conclude it on the last day.

There are two more new events which the Olympics organizers might consider introducing from 2016—fasting as in staying hungry as a political protest and arguing as in debating. It might even make more sense to combine the two, where contestants both fast and argue simultaneously. It would be interesting to see how the quality of their debate diminishes as their energy saps. I am pretty sure Indians would do well at those as well, although I do see several other Asian challengers here.

If you cannot decide whether I am serious or mocking, it is because I am not sure myself. The more I think about them, the less absurd some of these ideas seem to me.

Political power and libido

Narayan Dutt Tiwari (Pic courtesy: http://governor.ap.nic.in/)

When Narayan Dutt Tiwari was born in 1925 the discovery of deoxyribo-nucleic-acid (DNA) was still over a quarter century into the future. Eighty seven years later DNA is haunting him like nothing ever has in his more than five decades of one of India’s most influential political careers.

A paternity test has just confirmed that he fathered a son 32 years ago and never acknowledged him. The son, Rohit Shekhar, had been fighting for the past five years to compel Tiwari to accept his paternity.

I wrote this on May 29 this year when he was forced to give a DNA sample: "As politicians go Narayan Dutt Tiwari is as seasoned as you can get. He has been chief minister of India’s largest state of Uttar Pradesh three times and once that of a new state carved out of it. In the immediate aftermath of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination on May 21, 1991, he was in the running as his Congress Party’s choice for prime minister. That did not happen.”

With his paternity confirmed there is nothing much Tiwari can do other than do his best to make amends. It is perhaps too late to forge a father-son bond with Shekhar but he can at least begin by apologizing to him. It is not as if Tiwari’s best years are ahead of him. The decent thing to do is to express genuine contrition and do what he can to make things right. Ironically, Shekhar is Tiwari’s first and only child.

So far it does not seem as if Tiwari wants to make things right because he has described the who affair as a “conspiracy”. He has been quoted as saying, “Due to my simplicity, at this point of my age, my trusted people hatched a conspiracy against me in a planned way. I have no remorse against them. My sympathy is with Rohit Shekhar.” Unless the DNA test was rigged, it is hard to see any conspiracy in this. As of now DNA is the most reliable tool to establish paternity. The Delhi High Court ordered that it be carried out and made public.

Tiwari’s lawyers had pleaded that the result of the test be kept private in order to “protect his reputation.” Their optimism about his reputation is touching. By itself having a child out of wedlock is not a particularly career-ending or even career-diminishing problem in India. It is perhaps the unseemly lengths to which Tiwari went to keep it hidden that has been more damaging.

As far as I can tell this is the first case of a prominent Indian politician being made to give a DNA a sample and shown to be the real parent. The legal precedent could make many others of his ilk quite nervous because it cannot be anybody case that Tiwari is the only politician in India who has had affairs.

There is something in the air of the world of political power that seems to spike the libido of those who inhabit it. It is particularly true of those men who have become long used to formal power the way Tiwari had. It is perhaps a combination of high adrenaline that seems to course through politicians and  the easy availability of lascivious opportunities. I am not for a moment suggesting that a significant majority of male politicians mess around. However, I know for a fact that there is a fair number of them who would not mind yielding to temptations.

I would avoid going down the smutty path and speculating why it is that male Indian politicians are particularly fertile. Let me just say it may have something to do with the freedom of movement afforded by their fine cotton attire.

An object lesson in political grandiosity

Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi (Pic: www.narendramodi.in)

In saying that he should be hanged publicly if he is found guilty of complicity in the 2002 Gujarat riots, Chief Minister Narendra Modi has yet again provided an object lesson in political grandiosity.

His comments in an interview with Shahid Siddiqui, editor of the Urdu daily Nai Duniya, are symptomatic of a man who has an inordinately large sense of the self. What he is in effect saying is that even his failures and complicities, if those are indeed what he is guilty of, cannot be mitigated by a mere apology.

There seems to be another ploy behind daring a faceless adversary, namely the country’s judiciary, to hang him. He is conscious that the bar of proving his direct involvement in the 2002 killings is so high and therefore practically futile that grandstanding by saying “Hang me, if I am guilty” is his best expedient option. It is also a case of extreme pre-emption.

Somewhere along the lines Modi also appears to betray a martyr complex by raising his alleged failures to the level of a crime deserving of the capital punishment. It is a narrative which would play well within his hardcore constituency that would also see any conviction of Modi as someone who took one for the team. That is ironic because Modi has never really seen himself as a team player.

As political posturing goes this is fiendishly clever. For a politician subtly positioning himself for prime ministerial sweepstakes it cannot get smarter than choosing a virulent critic of his, editing a respected Urdu newspaper and a prominent Muslim to boot to give an interview which is a mixture of bluster and implied contrition. It is a no-brainer that he should have chosen an avowed critic of his to give a detailed interview in a newspaper largely read by the Muslims of Uttar Pradesh. Even if he manages to persuade a small percentage of them to at least be open-minded about him, Modi might have reasoned, he would stand a fair chance in national elections.

Modi would have known that his comments would set off a political churning both in the 24/7 broadcast media as well the bastion of national politics, namely Uttar Pradesh. Politicians around the world, particularly those as crafty as Modi, treat all media interviews as an exercise in either building themselves up or reinforcing their relevance. In his cost benefit analysis the one and a half hours spent with Siddiqui is worth so much more in terms of return on political investment. And Modi is nothing if not a Gujarati who instinctively understands return on investment (ROI).

Incidentally, speaking of ROI, Modi is touring Japan for the past four days mostly to encourage Japanese investments in Gujarat. It could well be a coincidence that he is out of the country doing what he likes best, talking development, just as the interview has come out. But then it could also be deliberate.

Even for Modi, who never tires of renewing his vows with Gujarat every so often, 13 years would have been a long time to remain in the state, subject of course to his winning the next assembly elections later this year. By the time 2014 national elections take place he would have completed nearly a decade and a half as Gujarat’s boss. The calculation appears to be to start clearing the brush in preparation for 2014.

Not many in his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would acknowledge publicly this but they know that Modi sees himself as larger than the party. He is one of those singular figures who shed affiliations and loyalties without any qualms as long as the self remains in control. He gives the impression that he has replaced ideological fealties with a messianic self-belief.

P.S.: This is my analysis of the man on the basis of having followed his career and comments for close to two decades.

Babu Ram Ishara, 1934-2012

It strikes me that in my now 30-year-long career as a journalist I have met more people than I often realize. Memories about many of them revive only on hearing of their death. Filmmaker B R Ishara, who died yesterday at age 78 in Mumbai, is one such example.

Ishara was among the occasional visitors during my many long interactions with the late actor Rajesh Khanna in the mid 1980s in Bombay. He was a shy, retiring type who came into his own elements gradually. Being in the presence of India’s first genuine superstar Ishara knew how to position himself in a manner that did not distort the august space that Khanna dwelled in.

By the time I got to know him briefly Ishara had already been a veteran of close to 30 movies but did not seem to enjoy a stature commensurate with his output. That was as much a reflection of the kind of movies he had made as the fact that he operated outside the norm. His movies were not particularly well crafted and often betrayed a touch of the seedy in terms of their production values but it was clear that he was passionately committed to them. One could not make 37 movies in one’s career and not know a thing or two about cinema.

 Filmmaker B R Ishara

An articulate and thoughtful man, Ishara seemed to compensate for some of Khanna’s own intellectual inadequacies. It was clear that Ishara was a well-read man who wanted to be seen as a serious filmmaker. Having run away from his home as a boy and come to Bombay to make movies, Ishara paid his dues in terms of his struggles to make it. “I used to be a tea boy on movie sets whose name no one cared to find out or remember. Mostly I got called Babu and that name stuck,” he said once.

Although born Roshan Lal Sharma in the Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh, his nom de plume became Babu Ram Ishara. I never quite asked him but Ishara was perhaps drawn from the Urdu word ishara which meant a sign or signal or hint and was added to complete his avatar as a filmmaker. I suspect he meant it more as a harbinger of things to come.

It was obvious that Ishara had a way with words, particularly in Hindi and Urdu although he mostly chose to converse with me in English since in a moment of levity Khanna had introduced me as a journalist from “the international press”. I then worked for the Associated Press (AP), a fact that might have added to my professional weight in the eyes of those who daily practiced the art of showmanship.

Among the themes that exercised Ishara’s mind was the widely prevalent hypocrisy while treating independent minded women in India. That explains his 1970 movie ‘Chetna’ starring Rehana Sultan as a prostitute named Seema. The movie’s theme is about society’s attitudes and double standards toward the so-called “fallen” women.

I vividly remember the posters of ‘Chetna’ because some of them had the picture of Sultan’s bare legs shot from behind with the film’s male lead, a debutant Anil Dhawan between them. In the India of 1970 that was quite a bold image that allowed boys hurtling toward puberty a great deal to fantasize about.

The movie was granted the A (Adults Only) rating by India’s Censor Board and that dashed many a boy’s libidinous hopes. It was considered audacious of Sultan to do the role of a prostitute who drinks and smokes and sheds clothes without any inhibition.

There is a scene in the movie where she tells an awkward and scandalized Dhawan who does not even look at a nude Seema, “Aaj tak mere saath aisa kabhi nahi hua Mr. Anil ki maine kapde utar diye ho aur koi mard itni der tak, itni door meri taraf peeth kiye khada raha ho.” (It has never happened to me Mr. Anil that after having removed my clothes a man has stood for so long and so far with his back turned on me.” Ishara wrote those lines and asserted that it was his way of showing the power of a woman, even a so-called “fallen” woman.

Ishara was conscious that he never quite broke into the ranks of the much heralded celebrity filmmakers despite having made 30 plus films and worked with some of the biggest names of the day. “Some of them still think I am that tea boy,” he joked once to me. “Yeh ganimat hai ke ab mujhe ‘ey zara chai lana’ nahi kehte.” (It is a small mercy that they don’t say ‘Hey, bring some tea’ to me now.”)

Stripping for a “fabulous cause” called Playboy

Sherlyn Chopra

Hugh Hefner’s ‘Playboy’ has been called many things over the decades but I am fairly certain it has never been called a “fabulous cause” as described by its first Indian playmate Sherlyn Chopra.

During an interview with CNN-IBN news channel in New Delhi Sherlyn was asked by a reporter, “You know some people might say that your claim to fame is, you know, taking your clothes off. How do you react to comments like that?”

Sherlyn (thoughtfully): “I did take my clothes off (pregnant pause) but then I did for a fabulous cause. And the cause was Playboy.”

Since her return from Los Angeles after shooting nude pictures for Playboy, the 28-year-old model and actress has been ensuring that her fellow Indians understand the enormity of her accomplishment. She has been educating people about the difference between being a porn star and posing in the nude for a world famous magazine. “Yeh baat to sab ko pata hai ki rolling camera ke saamney nude pose karna aur rolling camera ka samney sex karna yeh to do alag baaten hoti hein. (Everybody knows that to pose nude in front of a rolling camera and engaging in sex in front of rolling camera are two different things),” she explained.

She has also been telling people that this is her life and her body and she will do whatever she pleases. . “I do not think about what the people of India might say about my nudity. This is my life, my body and my work,” she said. For her the body of her work is indeed working her body.

I have nothing but admiration for Sherlyn for swimming in the shallow waters of celebrity and going whatever distance she has set for herself. Along the way she knows what to say so that the broadcast media will continue to slobber after her.

During a post-Playboy shoot news conference she said many things that less than two decades ago would have seemed sacrilegious coming from a young Indian woman. That Sherlyn comes from the joint Christian-Islamic heritage makes it even more compelling. Her father was Christian and mother is Muslim.

For instance, in what sounded like a question about whether she has augmented her body, she answered with apparent mocking seriousness, “I am glad I have met people from the field of modern science who have enhanced my tangible assets and I am grateful to the universe for blessing me with confidence and belief in myself.”

At one point when a female reporter seemed to express disappointment that she was fully clad in a sari and since Playboy is banned in India people may be deprived of seeing Sherlyn’s body, she said, “Aap karib se dekho. Sab kuchh dikhega. (Come and see up close. You will see everything) This is an Annette sari aur is ke neeche petticoat nahi hai.(This is an Annette sari and there is no petticoat underneath).” A quick clarification: I am presuming that there is a popular designer brand of saris by someone called Annette.

She was also asked about whether women dressed in skimpy clothes are more vulnerable to sexual assault. “I don’t think wearing less clothes leads to rape and fully covering the body saves you from rape. It is foolish to think like that. Rape happens when men lose their senses and become demonic. Being demonic has nothing to do with the length of one’s clothes.”

More than anything else, what I find greatly entertaining is that Sherlyn has figured out a path to success and celebrity and how she is playing the media like a fiddle along the way. The media is a willing accomplice because every time she says things like “There is no petticoat underneath” it gets them some ratings or hits. Under a thin veneer of derision and semiserious dissection of her comments I too have joined the ride for more or less the same reason.

If I am writing about Sherlyn for the second time in five days it may be mainly because I think I have an unconventional point of view but somewhere along her currency as a popular keyword and her ability to draw eyeballs is also a factor. As of this morning her name in Google search throws up 17,900,000 results.

No serious academic, or even a frivolous one like me for that matter, would say that a handful of sassy, ready to strip young women such as Sherlyn or Sunny Leone, an Indian-Canadian porn star who is getting movie roles in Mumbai, running around the world of showbiz in ever diminishing clothes constitute of a significant sample for a sociological study. But they certainly represent fading inhibitions among India’s urban and semi-urban population about female body.

Of course, no one can ever make the case that this apparent trend is in anyway helping reduce the unnervingly high incidence of sexual assault on women throughout the country. I have no intentions making this post into a serious discourse so it makes sense to end it right here.

Oprah looks at her food and it starts jumping into her mouth

Oprah Winfrey staring at the Gujarati thali (platter) waiting for the food to jump right in to her mouth** (Pic: Grab from www.oprah.com)

There is no way of confirming this story but legend has it that food fights break out among food items on Oprah Winfrey’s plate over which one should get eaten first.

I am told that foods of different kinds start lining up the night before on her plate, some of them even carry their sleeping bags. The only exception is salads which have been granted lifelong exemption from standing in the line. They can show up at will and no bouncers will stop them.

Legend also has it that she does not use her hands to eat. She merely looks at her food and it starts jumping into her mouth. The race to be eaten by Winfrey gets so intense sometimes that the National Guard has to be deployed to ensure that no violence occurs.

Winfrey has long reached a stage in her life where she does not have to deploy her own hands to do anything. I have this image of a dozen or so flunkies walking behind her, in front of her and on both her sides during all waking hours, anxiously looking for the subtlest of hints which might suggest a rising need. She may be hands-on as a corporate boss but that must not be taken literally.

So before India’s professional rage industry, mainly comprising young, sleek and urbane sophisticates, rush to condemn her for what she said on her India special on her new show ‘Oprah’s Next Chapter’, they need to understand the kind of life she leads. What I have described above is just a glimpse of the life that arguably one of the world’s most fabled entertainers lives.

On seeing her Indian hosts eating their food with hands (as opposed to what elsewhere?) Winfrey, who shot her special in India last year, said “I heard some Indian people eat with their hands still?” She heard it wrong. It is not some Indian people who eat with their hands. They all do and that has generally been the case since the advent of modern humans 200,000 years ago. Bipedalism ensured that two of the four limbs were freed up for tasks such as eating with hands when guests such as Winfrey came. Even Neanderthals ate with their hands, that is if you wrongly believe that they were the benchmark of barbaric, unrefined behavior.

By making the “some Indian people still eat with their hands” comment Winfrey put her foot in her mouth. (I had to get that one out). It ironically reminds of what Bill O’Reilly said after visiting Sylvia’s, a famous restaurant in Harlem, New York, in September, 2007. During September 19 edition of his radio show, O’Reilly said, "I couldn't get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia's restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it's run by blacks, primarily black patronship." He added, "There wasn't one person in Sylvia's who was screaming, 'M-Fer (motherfucker), I want more iced tea.' You know, I mean, everybody was -- it was like going into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb in the sense of people were sitting there, and they were ordering and having fun. And there wasn't any kind of craziness at all."

Of course, Winfrey’s comments are nowhere close to O’Reilly’s in terms of its affront but they do stem from a similar kind of easy ignorance about a different culture.

That said, what Winfrey said, while not worthy of someone of her global standing and influence, is also not worthy of breaking out into paroxysms of nationalist rage. Not that I have noticed much of that but one never knows. Such stories have a way of quickly acquiring ugly intensity. A 5000-plus years old civilization that has withstood and gobbled up marauders since Alexander can surely choose not to feel hurt by a TV entertainer’s comment.

** This particular meal was hosted by the Somanis, a family in Mumbai, which is purely vegetarian. They avoid even onion and garlic because, as the woman sitting next to Winfrey explained, they “agitate the mind.”

$35000000000000—Don’t sweat, it is $35 trillion

Super wealth is somewhat like the universe—after a while the numbers stop making sense. Take for example the amount of wealth siphoned off by the world’s superrich and parked in tax havens.

According to a story by Heather Stewart in The Guardian newspaper, at least $21 trillion has been hidden by the superrich in countries where tax laws are deliberately lax. The story quotes an extensive study by James Henry, a former chief economist at consultancy McKinsey and an expert on tax havens. The study was done for the Tax Justice Network. There is a possibility that the hidden wealth could be as much as $35 trillion.

A trillion dollars is 1 followed by 12 zeroes. That makes $35 trillion 35 followed by 12 zeroes. A trillion is a million million or a thousand billion. Or try this: The distance between the sun and the earth is about 93 million miles. If you lined up one dollar bills from the earth to the sun, you would have spent less than 0.01 percent of your wealth. If you are beginning to lose a sense of comprehension, you are also beginning to grasp the absurdity of the wealth stashed away by the mega-rich.

Henry’s study shows that some 10 million individuals have parked their assets offshore but a mere 92,000 of them own close to $10 trillion of the $21trillion hidden from tax authorities. Out of a total population of a little over seven billion just 92,000 own assets worth nearly $10 trillion. If there is a greater counter to the trickle down economics than this, I do not know. What it shows is that super wealth comes with its own super glue.

There is no way for you to know for sure but take my word for it. I am not one of those 92,000 or even 10 million unless you think that feigning poverty by installing a tip jar on this blog is an eccentricity I specialize in as a member of the Mega-Rich 92000.

Considering the staggering figures and presuming their general accuracy, it is clear that those who possess super wealth also simultaneously possess the will and the means to hide it. It is also clear that the the trickle down economics works only so long as it trickles down to a total of 10 million people on this planet. I am not resentful when I say this because grabbing and hoarding is a primal instinct that all of us have in varying degrees. My point is that the very wealthy should stop selling the non-sense of trickle down economics to those of us who are waiting looking up with our tongues sticking out and hands stretching out. A few dribbles do drop down but they are somewhat akin to post voiding dribbling that older men experience. (Sorry for the gross image but had no choice).

Wealth by its very nature is discriminating. She does not like a majority of the human race. She is a reluctant visitor. She likes to tease and move on. I do not know about you but I have been long convinced that wealth just does not like me. In the context of this new study, not to mention in the interest of saving me some work, it is worth repeating what I wrote on February 5 this year.

“It has taken me 30 years of working life and an intense process of elimination to reach a defining conclusion—Wealth just does not like me.

Our relationship has been one of perfunctory courtesies. She has always sought and found the least heartfelt, albeit it civil, way to greet me. Occasionally, when she has seemed to come on surprisingly strong, it has always turned out to be for someone standing behind or beside me. You know someone like Mark Zuckerberg or Mukesh Ambani. I mean figuratively because I have never met Zuckerberg and Ambani but only once. There is nothing more infuriating than being within earshot of wealth and being brushed off.

I have discovered that wealth is not contagious. It is not airborne. It cannot be contracted by sleeping with someone wealthy. You can get syphilis by sleeping with someone wealthy but not wealth. I can go on with some more STD comparisons if you insist but I think you get the picture.

So it is time for wealth and I to go our separate ways. Penury is always flashing me. She is hideously available and annoyingly faithful. She slobbers over me when I least want her. And I always want her the least. She firmly believes that relationships are for life. Sometimes she wants to get into a generational relationship. All those negatives notwithstanding, penury is always reliable and always at hand.

Another truth I have discovered is that while wealth is incestuous, penury is promiscuous. This one needs no elaboration.

Among a series of Buddha moments that I have had sitting under an unfinished ceiling of my basement one is that penury is painfully possessive, while wealth is delightfully self-absorbed. Penury is expansionist and wealth is exclusivist.”

President-elect Pranab Mukherjee can exult now

Pranab Mukherjee, left, greeted by Chandigarh Police Superintendent Rajender Singh Ghuman in Chandigarh during a recent campaign stop (Photo: Jay Mandal/On Assignment/ without Jay’s permission)

More often than not one finds unexpected amusement in utterly trivial facts.

For instance, as India gets ready for a new president in the person of probably its most astute politician Pranab Mukherjee, it strikes me that the country has just entered 1935 in terms of the time when its first citizen was born.

This useless trivia does not tell me anything instantly  but given time I can extract something out of it. Considering the very nature of this largely ceremonial office, it is understandable that there is next to no chance of anyone much younger, say in the late 40s or 50s, ever making the cut. The office of the president does require a strong understanding of India’s history, a solid command over its polity and at least working grasp of the country’s constitution. Not just that, its occupant also has to be someone who has lived a significant part of those elements as well.

One can fairly argue that someone who is 44 years old or for that matter 52 years old (just random numbers), while may amass the knowledge of history and the constitution, is unlikely to have internalized it all.

Mukherjee, born in 1935, is formidable on all three fronts and is regarded by many as a walking encyclopedia of things constitutional, legislative, political and historical. It is probably impossible to find someone with matching, let alone better, credentials. So it is just as well that he will be sworn in as India’s 13th president after easily winning the elections.

The office of the president is perhaps the only one which necessarily demands an older person seasoned by years in public life. While the office is not overtly political and does not demand that only politicians rise to occupy it, there is a certain advantage to having a person who brings together all the attributes that I spoke about. After all, at a time of a constitutional crisis it is always better to have an incumbent who is not going depend heavily on the advisors and scholars. In Mukherjee’s case, advisors and scholars face the risk of being made redundant. That’s not to say that he knows it all. Far from it, but in nine out of ten cases of any constitutionally challenging situation Mukherjee will be able to easily marshal his vast political, legislative, procedural, historical and constitutional knowledge.

India has not had a particularly serious constitutional crisis for a long time now. Although one can never rule it out, the odds of one occurring remain comfortably low. Given that, Mukherjee will be able to rightfully enjoy his five years in the overpowering opulence of a 300 plus room Rashtrapati Bhavan. It is an enviable fiefdom to which the very chosen few come and come to lord over.

Even if the incumbent chooses to be most frugal, the sheer moment of luxurious inertia that is intrinsic to not just the office of the president but the infrastructure surrounding it makes sure that a lot of the trappings and trimmings rub off.

As a sort of constitutional monarch of the world’s largest democracy, Mukherjee can legitimately exult a little bit in the privacy of his bathroom when he shaves on the morning of July 26, the day after formally taking over. On the other hand it is possible that there is an in-house barber who will do it for him, I mean shaving.