South Asia Daily

Here is to Ennio Morricone

Growing up in Ahmedabad in the 1960s and 70s, it was natural that Laxmikant Pyarelal came to me before Ennio Morricone (pronounced ennyo  mo ri ko ney). Hence ‘Taron mein saj ke apne suraj se” from the 1971 film ‘Jal Bin Machhli, Nrity Bin Bijli’ was heard by me before the 1966 ‘The Good, the Bad, the Ugly’s main theme.

So when I first heard Morricone’s score sometime in the mid-1970s I was both amused and intrigued. Could it be? Was it really? The answer to both is a resounding yes. Laxmikant Pyarelal did pick up their strain for ‘Taron mein saj ke’ from Morricone. In their defense, they did create a melody out of it as demanded by the song’s situation whereas Morricone was working to a wholly different movie circumstance in what came to be known as the Spaghetti Western with its sun-washed American West where the sun's glare makes everyone pull an Eastwood.

When Clint Eastwood rides in, the movie needed a score that perhaps only Morricone could have provided. There is, of course, no comparison between Sergio Leone, the director of this and other Spaghetti Westerns, V Shantaram, who directed ‘Jal Bin’.  For the sake perspective, Shantaram had already made his first film—Netaji Palkar— in 1927, two years before Leone was even born. Shantaram was born in 1901.

One can only speculate if Shantaram knew that Laxmikant Pyarelal were using the main theme from Leone’s classic made five years before ‘Jal Bin’. I don’t know.

In Morricone’s death today at age 91, cinema has lost a prolific artist with over 500 scores to his credit. It is a measure of the man’s passion that at age 85 or thereabout scored an extraordinary L’Ultima Diligenza Per Red Rock (or Last Stage to Red Rock), the opening theme from Quentin Tarantino’s ‘The Hateful Eight’.

There are so many memorable Morricone scores that one is spoiled for choice. Take for instance, his haunting piece for ‘A Fistful of Dollars’ (1964), also directed by Sergio Leone or a very different work for ‘Cinema Paradiso’ (1988) or ‘The Battle of Algiers’ (1966). It is a long list.

Morricone’s had a special passion for different kinds of sounds such as cowbells. In that he reminds me of Rahul dev Burman who was absolutely passionate about any and all sounds. The two would have hit it off instantly.

A booster shot of faint reflected glory

I think it is time for a booster shot of some reflected glory.  The Dalai Lama turns 85 tomorrow. Given my abiding interest in the subject I was just digging around the net to see if I can write something beyond what I have already written. I have written a great deal, including my own 500-plus page updated biography of his ‘The Dénouement: The 14th Dalai Lama's life of persistence’. (Plug done.)

What I found was quite fortuitous. On the occasion of “Guru Purnima’ in India, the day when many Indians celebrate and worship their gurus/teachers/mentors. The celebration can often get into paroxysms of piety, attributing virtues to gurus which often do not exist. I have never seen the point of gurus. In fact, I wrote on my Facebook time line “In there interest of clarity, there are no gurus. There is just you.” But I digress.

That search for “gurus, Mayank Chhaya’ led me to this book by the 14^th Dalai Lama where I do indeed figure. That takes care of the reflected glory portion of the post. I did not know that I figure in a book by the Dalai Lama titled ‘My appeal to the world’. In that the book refers to me in a particular context. (See the image of the passage above.)

It is clear to me that that reference happened because of what I wrote in the original edition of my biography Dalai Lama: Man, Monk, Mystic’, published by Doubleday/Random House in 2007 as well as over 20 publishers around the world.

In that biography as well as its updated 2019 edition I have this passage:

“Since I grew up in a country where renunciates and ascetics crowd the landscape, yet another monk was unlikely to attract my attention. This was particularly true of the one who lived some thousand miles away in the pre-Himalayan Dhauladhar mountain range in the country's northwest.  In the 1960s and ‘70s the Dalai Lama was featured in local Indian newspapers frequently, especially after the country's disastrous war with China in 1962. There were some delightfully misinformed people in my neighborhood who seriously believed that India could avenge its humiliating defeat at the hands of China using the Dalai Lama’s Tantric powers, which ordinary people took to mean some sort of black magic or occult practices. In their neat, if completely flawed formulation, the Dalai Lama, forced to flee Tibet amid grave threats to his life by the invading Chinese army barely three years earlier, would be thirsting to settle scores with them. And could there be a more potent weapon for a reincarnate Buddhist monk than black magic?

In 1967, a full five years after the war between India and China one of my neighbors gathered unsuspecting and impressionable children like myself and conjured up an image of the Dalai Lama going into a deep trance and unleashing destructive energy against the People's Liberation Army. Since he came from the land of Mount Kailash, the putative hub of the Hindu god Shiva, the raconteur told us that the Dalai Lama had three eyes, one right in the middle of his forehead. The third eye was where all his power of cosmic destruction resided. If he opened that eye, there was no way China could survive. India's then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, he claimed with utter certainty, had persuaded the Dalai Lama to invoke devastating wrath that would instantly atomize the Chinese army. Such street-side phantasms let loose by the neighborhood fantasist merely reinforced my perception that the Dalai Lama was more apocryphal than real.”

So let me get this straight. I am quoting myself being quoted in a book by the Dalai Lama by once again quoting myself. This is not just reflected glory once but several times over. No wonder it is so faint and I struggle to get any traction on social media. In my defense, allow a poor print journalist some reflected glory at least, if not real money.

More to the point, I will do a bigger piece pegged to the 85^th birthday of the Dalai Lama tomorrow.

Here is to Saroj Khan

Saroj Khan, who died at age 71, was one of India’s most defining movie choreographers.

This song composed by Laxmikant Pyarelal and written by Rajinder Krishn was one of Saroj Khan’s earliest pieces of choreography and as far as I can tell from the IMDB credits her first as a full-fledged dance choreographer.

Before Geeta Mera Naam she had ten credits from 1960 onward as an assistant choreographer in movies such as Kalpana, Aas ka Panchhi, Nartakee, Awara Badal, Aai Milan ki bela, Mera Saya, Farz, Reshma aur Shera and Annadata. Given that she was born in November 1948, I am a bit doubtful about her earliest credit of 1960 because she would have had to be just 12. It is possible that she did indeed start that early.

However, the important thing is that in an extraordinary career spanning close to six decades, Saroj Khan not only went on to define Hindi cinema core feature of dance but in the process create many of its most joyous moments for decades.

If dance is the heart of Hindi cinema, then one can argue that Saroj Khan was its heart in the last four decades. With 308 films to her credit since, according to the IMDB, when she began as an assistant choreographer on the 1960 movie Kalpana, apparently at age 12, she went on the define and redefine dance movies over the last four decades but fashion many a movie career. Looking at the movies she choreographed for reads like the who’s who of Hindi cinema of the last four decades.  Saroj Khan’s command over the pop dance form, which she invented in many ways, was on full display in this movie and this song particularly. Madhuri Dixit slithering backward on stage in the 1988 'Tezaab' by N Chandra in the song 'Ek do teen" and offering a version of salam as if adjusting an unseen helmet visor worked so brilliantly. That set Dixit up for a hugely successful career.

It was a measure of her very impressive natural talents for bodily movements that even in this particular song above shot inside a mid-century modern living room with the iconic actress Sadhana and Feroz Khan, Saroj Khan manages to give Sadhana some moves and steps which an ordinary mind could not have thought of. For instance, in the very first antara, interlude, the way Sadhna slides over what appears to be a suede sofa. I suggest you watch the song to see the point I am making.

Saroj Khan’s filmography is so varied that it is rather hard to choose what steps she might have either completely invented on the fly or at the very least totally transformed from the already existing one. It is easy to claim though that what passes worldwide as “Bollywood dance” to a measure of great awe and merriment was very significantly created by her.

Here is to Saroj Khan.

Javed Akhtar on Sahir Ludhianvi versus Majrooh Sultanpuri

Last night, as part of my radio interview series 'Stars Aligned' for Bharat FM I had the extraordinary poet-writer Javed Akhtar as my guest. We spoke for about an hour and a half in now what I am being told by at least a couple of thousand Facebook listeners was a "deep"  but "very entertaining" conversation. Who am I to argue against my praise?

We spoke about many things, including Javed Akhtar's now honored atheism by no less a celebrity atheist than the highly respected ethologist Richard Dawkins, but one particular passage that I relished was a theme I have written about a few times before--my favorite Hindi cinema lyricist.

I am republishing here a post I wrote on October 23, 2010 arguing why Majrooh Sultanpuri is my favorite Hindi movie song writer although Sahir Ludhianvi comes precariously close to being one too. I was waiting to ask Javed Akhtar what he thought of this Sahir versus Majrooh debate in my mind. see our exchange in the video excerpt above.

October 23, 2010

Majrooh Sultanpuri is my favorite Hindi movie song writer although Sahir Ludhianvi comes precariously close to being one too.

However, what clinches the deal for Majroohsaab is the benchmark one ought to use while judging the quality of a Hindi cinema song writer.The most important benchmark to bear in mind is not just the quality of writing but the sheer range and the ability to encapsulate any given song situation because Hindi cinema is nothing if not a vast collection of improbable singing prompts. I don’t think anyone comes even close to him. Anand Bakshi was prolific as well but could not produce the quirky brilliance of Sultanpuri.

The purpose of this post is not to engage in a scholarly assessment of a lyricist who wrote hundreds of songs and was regarded as a giant of Urdu poetry as well as the Progressive Writers’ Movement. I could not possibly do justice to his talent. So I would do something what admirers of Hindi cinema music might consider nearly blasphemous and just cite three random songs to illustrate my point about the level of integrity and commitment he brought to bear anything that Majroohsaab did. These are not his best songs but do a powerful job of how he gave his absolute best every time.

These three songs are chosen without any particular rationale. They just popped out of my memory bank. The first one is from the 1958 movie ‘Kala Pani’ composed by the ever compelling Sachin Deb Burman. The song was ‘Nazar lagi raja tore bangle par.” The second song is from the 1967 movie ‘Shagird’ composed by Laxmikant Pyarelal. The song was ‘Bade miyan deewane.’ And the third is also from the 1958 film ‘Lajwanti.’ It goes ‘Koi aya dhadkan kehti hai.’

Look at these two verses from the Kala Pani number. Excuse the translation but this is the best I can do.

जो मैं होती राजा कलि बदरिया

बरस रहती राजा तोरे बंगले पर

जो मैं होती रजा बेला चमेलिया

लिपट रहती राजा तोरे बंगले पर

(If I were a dark cloud

I would keep raining on your bungalow

If I were a climbing vine (Chameli is Jasmine which is a climbing vine)

I would wrap around your bungalow)

It is fascinating that here Sultanpuri uses the bungalow as a metaphor for the man (Dev Anand) that the woman(Nalini Jaywant) pines for.

 

सीखो करतब नए नए

फैशन के ढब नए नए

ढीला ढाला लिबास क्यों

रेशम पहनो कपास क्यों

फन यह जादूगरी का है

अरमां तुम को पारी का है

तो क़िबला मरो मंतर

डेनडी बन कर

निकलो वक़्त-ए-शाम

(Learn some new tricks

Of fashion and style

Why loose and floppy attire

Why  cotton and not silk

It is the art of magic

If you desire a beauty

Then cast a spell

Be a dandy

And step out  in the evening)

Sultanpuri must have been explained the situation where one man, a hipster (by the standards of those days) played by Joy Mukherjee teaches the other, not a hipster played by Inder Sen Jauhar, how to pimp it up a bit if he wants to attract a few women. I am pretty sure Sultanpuri used the word dandy although the way Mohammad Rafi says it sounds like dainty. I am going with dandy. Now that’s what I mean by Majroohsaab’s versatility. Fan yeh jadugari ka hai sounds so bewitching.

कोई आया धड़कन कहती है

धीरे से पलकों की यह

गिरती उठती चिलमन कहती है

होने लगी किस की आहट की गुलकारियां

परवाना बनके उडी दिल की चिंगारियां

झूम गया झिलमिलाता दिया

 (My rising heartbeat suggests someone is here

So do my fluttering eyelashes)

In this particular song I have to excuse myself from translating aahat ki gulkariyan. Although I do understand what the poet is saying in Hindi/Urdu I am unable to capture the essence in English. The last two lines mean something like ‘The fire in my heart escaped like butterflies (literal translation is moths but I am going with butterflies) and The twinkling flames swayed).

So here is to Majrooh Sultanpuri.

 

About my writer's desk

My writer's desks

An Instagram of her writer’s desk by dear friend and fellow journalist Natasha Israni prompted this post. Lately, I have been slacking off a bit on writing this blog which I have written everyday for 12 years, having missed perhaps about 20 times in all. So you know 12 years are 4,380 days of which I have missed about 20. That is an exceptional hack at work.

Natasha’s writer’s desk is lovely and one felt like sitting there and start writing. Seeing hers I decided to take a picture of my desk/s. I have written a great deal on my twin desks, especially the one on the right. I have ghost-written at least five books on that apart from two of my own and being in the midst of two more.

I am aware that writers get anal about where they work. I am not one of those. In fact, I am not even a writer yet since I have done only four books of my own. My benchmark for being called a writer in a serious sense is at least 10 books. Until then one is just playing writer, one is pretending to be one. I do not know if I will reach that and then breach that benchmark. That’s the intention but then the intention was also to fully crack quantum mechanics and the universe. That has not happened yet.

I am beginning to think that I may yet crack quantum mechanics before I complete my first ten books. Incidentally, I do not count the ten I have ghost-written because they are not mine although at least five of them were almost completely written by me from a very thin premise by the commissioning party.

One has had to become a mercenary with the print media abandoning one to the wolves. In my defense, every book I ghost-write, I do so with the highest amount of integrity and without compromising either my moral or journalistic standards. Trust me that’s very hard to keep up.

Coming back to the desk, the one on the left with the desktop and sound mixer is quite an old Ikea. Surprisingly, it has lasted and not developed the furniture version of arthritis even as I have developed the early human version of it.

Speaking of the writing desk, let me publish a ghazal I wrote on my desktop the other day. I normally translate my works but I did not this one because I do not feel like it. It is not as if you pay me to read this blog.

रोज़ एक मायूस सहर देखता हूँ

जागते ही टूटता एक घर देखता हूँ

एक उम्र से जो मुठ्ठी में बंध था

वोह हाथों से छूटता हुनर देखता हूँ

तुम्हारे हिस्से कुछ उजाले हों शायद

मैं तो फैलते सायों का असर देखता हूँ

यह कायनात का कौन सा कौना है

जहाँ सिर्फ अंधेरों का बसर देखता हूँ

गर छाया है तो रौशनी भी होगी कहीं

फ़िलहाल तो मैं ज़ुल्मात पुरअसर देखता हूँ

--मयंक छाया 

Somewhat personal reminiscence of P V Narsimha Rao on his 99th birth anniversary

Today marks the 99^th birth anniversary of India’s late pioneering reformist Prime Minister P V Narsimha Rao, with whose five-year tenure about half of my posting in New Delhi as a journalist coincided. During that posting I met him many times.

Right until May 20, 1991 Narasimha Rao was in a full retirement mode having led a rich and fulfilling public life since 1957 and about to be 70 he thought it was as good a time as any to retire from active politics. It was a measure of how serious he was that even his books, which he called “most prized possession” during one of his many interactions with me, were packed and ready to be sent to Hyderabad.

Then 24 hours later everything changed in such a violent and definitive way that fundamentally transformed a man in a retiring mode into a man of history literally overnight. Former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu by a Tamil Tiger suicide bomber. Rao, who was in Nagpur then, had to cut short his visit to return to Delhi.

It fell on Rajiv Gandhi’s wife Sonia to decide who might lead the Congress Party with her husband gone. The first name to be suggested was that of former Vice President Shankar Dayal Sharma, who demurred on the grounds of his age and health. The next name to be considered was that of Narasimha Rao.

Instead of retiring not only did Rao return to Delhi but went on to stay there for at least the next five years…as India’s 9th prime minister. “It was a case of life giving you what to you least expect,” Rao told me in one of his interviews.

Since the most defining legacy of Rao as the prime minister and Dr. Manmohan Singh as his handpicked finance minister is India's economy it is important to point out the circumstances in which the former rose to the country’s top office. In the immediate aftermath of Gandhi’s assassination India’s internal security was not the only question Rao confronted—and it was indeed an existential question—but even an equally important economic one.

In early 1991, I happened to have been told a very high finance ministry official, whose name I have chosen not to reveal after these many years, that India’s foreign exchange reserve was so bad at that point between January and June 1991 that it faced defaulting on its external balance of payment within weeks. With the country plunged in a deep crisis because of the Gandhi assassination anyone who came in as prime minister had a harrowing task laid out.

In January 1991, the foreign exchange reserves stood at $ 1.2 billion and by June when Rao took over as prime minister it was halved. In foreign exchange terms India’s was pauperized. Just for your comparison, industrial tycoon Mukesh Ambani’s high-rise home alone reputedly cost a billion dollars. That kind of skewed wealth creation was also one of the consequences of the fundamental policy alteration that Rao had to make right off the bat. He took over on June 21, 1991 and the very next day among the top ministers to be sworn in was Dr. Singh as the finance minister.

India had to to secure an emergency loan of $2.2 billion from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) by pledging 67 tons of the country’s gold reserves as collateral. The Reserve Bank of India airlifted 47 tons of gold to the Bank of England and 20 tons of gold to the Union Bank of Switzerland to raise USD 600 million. It was that desperate. If the country were a 1950s Hindi movie, there would be a scene where a character actor such as Nana Palsikar or Nasir Hussain takes off his turban and puts it on the floor as an act of abject supplication and says, “मैं घर का सोना गिरवी रखता हूँ. मेरी पगड़ी मत उछालो. (I am pledging my family gold. Don't humiliate me.)

Rao told Dr. Singh what he later told my colleague Tarun Basu, whom he knew well, and I. The message to Dr Singh was, “Give me a bold budget and I will take care of the political backlash.” The most intense backlash, ironically, came from his own Congress Party plus some entrenched business interests such as individual businessmen such as Dhirubhai Ambani and others  and chambers of commerce who had made a lot of money from India’s severely license-controlled economy.

Interestingly, years before, in 1984 to be precise, just as Rajiv Gandhi had risen to be India’s prime minister, Dhirubhai had answered that very question from me saying, “Mayankbhai, I work with the economic regime that is given to me by our politicians. Open up the economy and I will compete openly.”

The rest is history as Rao using Dr. Singh as his ramrod went on to dismantle the notorious regulations, a legacy of decades of the Soviet style commanding heights of economy. To be fair, those policies were essential at the beginning of India’s life as a new nation-state plundered for nearly two centuries by the English colonial predators.

For a long time, Prime Minister Rao did not get the credit for transforming India’s economy albeit necessitated by a set of dire circumstances. Nearly three decades later and on his 99^th birth anniversary (he died on December 23, 2004) things have changed. He is now widely seen as the progenitor of the economic reform and liberalization in India.

Famously polyglot he reputedly spoke 17 languages which may be an overstatement but apart from his mother tongue Telugu he had varying command over Marathi, Hindi, Oriya, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Sanskrit, Tamil, Urdu, English, French, Arabic, Spanish, German and Persian. I am certain he was proficient in many of those, including Spanish.

He told Tarun and I that he insisted on reading the Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s "Love in the Time of Cholera," in its original Spanish. “It reads way better in Spanish than it’s translation.” He told us. Rao wrote fiction in the Hindi, Marathi and Telugu languages.

He also wrote a novel in English called ‘The Insider’ whose synopsis reads: “The Insider is an account of the political scenario of India during the time of the former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, who is the author of the book. The novel is based on a fictional state called Afrozabad, which is modelled on the actual state of Hyderabad.

In the story, the author talks about the shocking but true political happenings in the country that he witnessed during his tenure. The plot centers around a character called Anand, a young man who gives up a lucrative career in the hopes of bringing about political reformation. He begins his political career by contesting against the oppressive ruling party. Next, he reaches a spot where he has to choose between the current Chief Minister and his rival. His rival soon wins the post of CM, and he is made to serve under him. Anand then moves to Delhi, at a time when Indira Gandhi takes over the reigns of power. Under her governance, the tables turn, for Anand now replaces his rival Chaudhary and becomes the Chief Minister of Afrozabad. He then has to run the political show under her regime.

The book discusses the state of events and the political scenario in India under the leadership of Indira Gandhi, delving into areas like her rise to power, second coming, assassination, followed by her son Rajiv Gandhi’s entry into the world of politics. The Insider reveals to the reader the state of affairs in a political scenario, narrated by a man who has had first-hand experience of it all.”

Some observations about John Bolton's moral calisthenics

The one question that former National Security Adviser John Bolton has been aggressively and even disdainfully asked—by the way, rightly so—is why it is that he was willing to say for two million dollars (his supposed book advance) things about President Donald Trump that he refused to say in a Congressional testimony.

The answer is quite simple and the one I wish he had the integrity to give candidly. “Between the options whether I should make two million dollars and help my family and I secure our financial future or testify for no money and help history even if not the impeachment vote itself, I chose the former,” is what he could have said or a version of that in his own language.

There is no great mystery here as far as I can see. Like many who entered the Trump ecology, Bolton too appears to have chosen to help himself first over helping the country in the hope that by helping themselves they may eventually help the country. That is a self-serving approach but purely at a selfish survivalist level it is understandable.

Here is a man who had a direct view of the seedy and perhaps even, for America, dangerously counterproductive workings for 17 months. He also had considerable influence to change the course of many events and yet he did not do that. However, he says he tried many times to do precisely that but without much success. Bolton’s book ‘The Room Where it Happened: A White House Memoir’ levels accusations at the president, even a single one of which would/could/should have undone any other presidency but they did not. In fact, no one should be surprised if he wins a second term despite his rival former Vice President Joe Biden’s 14-point lead over Trump in a New York Times/Siena College.

It is instructive that despite all that he himself insists went down in the White House, including the sickening coddling of China’s President Xi Jinping by the US president, Bolton still says he will not vote for Biden because of his own conservative principles and values. So let me get this straight. Those conservative values and principles did not stand in his way for 17 months even as he allowed this Trump ecology to conserve and then even profit off it but voting for Biden undermines them. That’s neat is all I can say.

For many Republicans Trump is the ultimate means justifies the end vehicle on which they have hitched a ride for the past three years and more and may not mind continuing that for another four years. In an interview with Bill Maher on his HBO show Real Time with Bill Maher, Bolton says with a straight face that he would like the Republicans to retain control of the Senate in order that a prospective Biden presidency has some check on it. This is so rich in its expediency and in being devoid of any rectitude that one does not even know where to begin dismantling it. Here is a man who has written a 500 plus pages castigating a president whom he calls incompetent and unfit for the office who is aided and abetted by the very Republican senate that he wants to act as a check on a possible Biden presidency.

Process that over the weekend.

Preparation H1B

We might as well call it Preparation H1B. That’s how Indian technology professionals are feeling now.

The way these work visas, which go to Indian tech professionals in a vast majority year after year, have been temporarily suspended by President Donald Trump.

Just to quickly put the numbers in perspective how Indian professionals benefit from these, out of 85,000 H1B issued last year about 20,000 were for those who have advanced degrees. Of the remaining 65,000 some 70% or about 45,000 issued to Indian tech professionals.

In terms of L1 visas, which allows companies to transfer executives to America, of the 77,000 issued last year about 18000 went to Indians.

In terms of green cards, there are a million people waiting as of now, of which 70% are said to be Indians. That number is expected to swell to 2.5 million of which about 70% are expected to be Indians.

In short, anything that happens in immigration or work visas in America have an inordinate impact on Indians.

When Trump was slobbered over in Ahmedabad, my hometown, courtesy of his sanguinely enthusiastic friend, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, during his state visit on February 24 and 25, it was hardly anticipated that barely four months later he would suspend the visas still so coveted in India.

While all countries must have visa regimes that work for them, in the case of the H1B visas, they have not only worked wonderfully for america for decades but created quantifiable wealth, contribution to the economy and pumped in real hard cash by the billions into the national exchequer.

The COVID 19 pandemic has led to more than 40 million people out of their jobs. The notion that not allowing 65,000 job seekers from outside America would significantly dent the mounting joblessness is so manifestly untrue. Do consider the fact that, and this is according to The New York Times,  poor Americans are the hardest hit by the unemployment crisis. “Fully 39 percent of former workers living in a household earning $40,000 or less lost work, compared with 13 percent in those making more than $100,000,’ the Times quoted a Fed official in a story by Jeanna Smialek on May 20.

It is possible that tech workers on H1B, especially those coming from India do indeed eat away jobs for Americans but that number is not so high as to constitute the kind crisis that the presidential executive order makes it out to be. Any job lost is tragic and harrowing for families. I am uniquely qualified to say this not having had a salaried job for over a decade now. Some of it could be my incompetence but there are other factors as well. I have been routinely disregarded for journalistic and related positions that should have come to me blindly.

The point is numbers here do not add up when we lay the blame for joblessness to any significant degree on the H1B visas. Like I conceded the visa holders do take away some jobs from local Americans but even there the situation is how you assess employability.

To me this temporary suspension of H1B is nothing more than political grandstanding in a presidential election season.

No headline required

Uday--MC

Galwan, Google Earth and a fraught view

The Galwan River Valley, Google Earth view

If you want to understand the recent violent India-China confrontation in the Galwan River Valley along the line of actual control between the two Asian giants, I suggest you do not use Google Earth but also use it. This may seem an absurd and dichotomous suggestion to make because it is inherently contradictory to the extent that it cancels itself out.

Let me explain. If you must use Google Earth, you have to be ready to be disoriented by the sheer scale of what you are looking at as a satellite view of the region. The view is so austere and impersonal that it removes you completely from the real human pain felt by the 20 or more Indian soldiers who died after a hand-to-hand combat with Chinese soldiers in an area that from this elevation makes no sense to fight over.

Consider this simple fact. Even the slightest movement of your cursor takes you up and down by several thousand feet and across by several hundred kilometers. Dropping from an elevation of 20,000 plus feet to the level of the valley at about 13,000 feet is a question of virtually no time. Zooming in close to what looks like some Indian settlement along the riverbed dated 8/1/2016 may feel like a simulation but was in fact real at the time it was captured. I am not sure if it is still there.

The overall effect of navigating this troubled area using Google Earth is to create a cruel distance between what may have happened on the ground during the recent bloody standoff between the soldiers of the two countries. The Google Earth view gives you no sense of the sheer physical pain and suffering of the 20 or more soldiers who died in a hand-to-hand combat with the Chinese or the lifelong emotional pain of their families.

The overall point I am trying to make is that Google Earth view has the potential to desensitize you the way some of the operators of drones armed with Hellfire missiles have complained. As technology goes, Google Earth is a crowning achievement for the human race but it like all high technologies it also has a potentially destructive side to it.

Ever since the India-China standoff began over the Galwan River Valley I have been visiting it using Google Earth. Even though the images are quite dated, they do continue to accurately represent the terrain and that is where my second point becomes relevant. The fact that you can go up and down several thousand feet on hostile Himalayan mountains or traverse several hundreds kilometers by a very slight cursor movement is useful in helping you keep Earth and our position on it in perspective. For someone acutely philosophically-minded as I am and even clinical this tool is a gift.

I was thinking how everything we have been and become since the rise of modern humans some 200,000 years ago so quickly vanishes into indistinguishable terrain even at an elevation of 20,000 feet or so. You are struck by the utter futility of nation-states’ quest to grab, expand and control territories. The satellite view of Earth so thoroughly disengages you from the real human emotions so quickly that one ends up wondering whether anything is real at all.

What was real visceral pain for the Indian soldiers who died and were wounded on the ground so quickly seems unfeelingly remote on a Google Earth view that it takes some readjusting to get back on the ground. I toggled between a view from 10 miles and one in the valley next to the settlements at 13,000 plus feet and felt upended by how so very different they are.