Mayank Chhaya Daily

India’s income tax raids

Income tax raids may seem like a case of anachronistic government overreach. However, they not only survive but even thrive in India. Reports are coming of coordinated raids on the offices of Ekta Kapoor, regarded as the prima donna of India’s television and movie production business, and her family members.

The offices of Balaji Telefilms, Kapoor’s publicly listed entertainment company, along with her family’s other properties, including their residences in Mumbai are reported to have been targeted by India’s Income Tax Department. The searches also include Kapoor’s father, Jeetendra, one of the most successful stars of Hindi cinema, and her brother Tushar, a moderately successful actor. Those are the facts as widely reported by the Indian media.

Income tax raids in India are elaborately hush-hush operations where each one is given a codename. During months of background work before a typical raid, the Income Tax Department determines which establishments to raid simultaneously in order to ensure that the target is caught unawares and has no time to hide or destroy evidence of tax evasion. Of course, it is not so uncommon that the news of impending raids is often leaked to the affected party in time for them to scrub any wrong-doing or clear out sackfuls of cash and jewelry.

Those who carry out such raids are officers of supposedly unimpeachable integrity. Not that such officials have a certain look about them but if you observe closely them they do have a certain look about them. I have been witness to a couple of such raids in the 1980s and 1990s. No, I was not the target. In my case, they would have had to plant evidence of misbegotten and accumulated wealth first and then raid. More often than not, the officer heading such raids used to be a middle-aged man wearing a basic color half-sleeved terry cotton shirt and pleated trousers. Strangely in both cases the man—and it used to be mostly men—heading the raiding team had had a fresh haircut, which was severely close-cropped at the back and side. It was as if they needed that to enhance the look of menacing sternness.

In those days, and perhaps even now too, there was a definite stigma attached to being raided. However, there was also a measure subtle admiration among the raided people’s neighbors because it meant they had made it in life. In one of the two raids that I chanced upon, it involved a mid-level businessman. Soon after the search and seizure concluded I saw him come out accompanied by the officers. He kept dusting imaginary dust off his shirt as if he felt soiled by the experience. He did not look up in case his eyes met with the curious neighborly onlookers.

Coming back to the raids on Ekta Kapoor, I have a fair idea what the officers might eventually find. Kapoor pioneered and profited from some of India’s most watched urban TV family dramas, where all their women actors generously lodged the parting of their hair with sindoor. The characters wear so much sindoor that Kapoor’s line producer had to have bought the red powder by the sackful. My suspicion is that the ongoing raids have mostly yielded sindoor whose quantity may be enough to smear every Indian woman’s parting everyday for the next 5000 years. (Humor and sarcasm).

One understands the motivations of such raids and the necessity to enforce the provisions of the income tax laws in the letter and spirit. That said, I am not entirely sure if those hoarding unaccounted wealth of any meaningful consequence for the national exchequer would do so by hiding it in their mattresses. Sure, one is bound to find some unaccounted wealth in almost all wealthy Indian homes. It is also important for a growing but shockingly iniquitous economy like India to make sure that people pay their fair share of taxes so that the less privileged too get too enjoy some semblance of a decent life. All those are good things, of course. But in terms of helping meet massive shortfalls in tax collection, such raids have only salutary effect.

Being part of an inherently showy profession the movie people do attract more attention of the tax authorities. In recent years, there has been a happy trend among top earning stars to pay impressively high advance income tax, which is calculated on the basis of their anticipated income. In fact, the Income Tax Department even releases a list of the country’s highest personal income tax payers, some of whom are movie stars. Whether or not the high earners of the movie and television industry would make an identifiable difference to the country’s overall tax receipts even if they paid every single cent owed is a matter of opinion. In so much as they generate news headlines and, hopefully, by implication, scare other bigger tax evaders into coughing up before being targeted, such raids do serve a symbolic purpose.

If tax raids are about the principle that everyone must pay their fair share, then they are laudable. My point they almost never lead to a sense of fair play among those who make a lot of money. It largely remains a you-evade-we-raid affair vulnerable to serious corruption.

Cash is the ultimate lubricant

Since I am not Hamid Karzai presiding over a giant mountain pass in permanent ferment intelligence agencies do not drop off suitcases, backpacks and plastic bags full of millions of dollars in cash in my basement.

Matthew Rosenberg reports in The New York Times today how the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Iran have been plying the Karzai government with huge sums of cash to buy influence. The primary purpose of any unaccounted cash is necessarily outside the bounds of a legitimate conduct of diplomacy. There is a long history of the CIA softening up people and groups with large amounts of cash. Cash is the ultimate lubricant that smoothens intercourse between nations and peoples.

I am the proponent of the astoundingly original theory that life is 98 percent cash, one and a half percent sex and everything else, including our definitions of morality, crammed in the remaining half percent. Not that I need any vindication but this story lends it nevertheless.

If an individual displayed the kind of reckless criminal propensities that a country like Afghanistan might do, they would be incarcerated. In contrast, countries such as Afghanistan get rewarded with cash. What is criminal in an individual is expedient in a nation. Its funny how you humans conduct your affairs.

What is disturbing about the infusion of off-the-books cash is this bit in Rosenberg’s damning story, “Moreover, there is little evidence that the payments bought the influence the C.I.A. sought. Instead, some American officials said, the cash has fueled corruption and empowered warlords, undermining Washington’s exit strategy from Afghanistan.”

It is remarkable that after spending hundreds of billions of dollars on Afghanistan, the U.S. is also engaged in greasing an assortment of pliable warlords, politicians and officials.

The Times story says that after trying to buy influence Iran has now stopped sending cash. The CIA, meanwhile, continues.

“American and Afghan officials familiar with the payments said the agency’s main goal in providing the cash has been to maintain access to Mr. Karzai and his inner circle and to guarantee the agency’s influence at the presidential palace, which wields tremendous power in Afghanistan’s highly centralized government. The officials spoke about the money only on the condition of anonymity,” the story says.

I come back to the point I made earlier but slightly differently. It is remarkable that after spending hundreds of billions of dollars on Afghanistan, the U.S. needs to ply the Karzai government with unaccounted cash to “maintain access.” Individuals would have been skewered for much smaller failures than what governments can get away with.

Iran may have stopped dumping cash on the Karzai government but do we know anything about China or India, both of which seek influence there for reasons of minerals and strategic security? There is so far nothing to suggest that Beijing and Delhi have also adopted this business model.

If I were Karzai, I would wake up every morning at 4 a.m., go to my palatial bathroom, look into my giant mirror and just laugh holding my stomach for about six minutes at my absurdly successful life.

I M Ran

If Imran Khan were a rapper, he could have chosen the trade name I M Ran.

That bit has nothing to do with the rest of the post. I just wanted to get it out of my system because what is writing, after all, if not purging oneself of uselessly clever puns?

As Pakistan gets ready for its May 11 parliamentary election, it is hard to tell who the next leader of the country might be. Former cricket superstar turned an earnest politician Imran Khan thinks that for him and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf Party (PTI) the results are a fait accompli, in that they have won in their minds and all they need to do now is actually win at the hustings.  It is a different story that his rivals, Asif Ali Zardari, the current president and leader of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), and Nawaz Sharif, former prime minister and the leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) have the same sense of fait accompli. (Excuse the two long sentences).

Politicians never lose; they merely get ready to win next time. In my long years of reporting politics in India, I did not come across a single politician who would say, “There is no chance of my victory but I am going for it anyway.” That’s because unlike so many other professions politics is about self-belief. Khan has no shortage of it himself. His primary calculation is that since out of the total electorate of 90 million 40 million will vote for the first time, they would like a fresh face with no political baggage. On paper, it sounds compelling to argue that the electorate feels jaded at the bunch of usual suspects who take their turns by recycling old ideas such as Zardari and Sharif. The new broom, as in the 40 million first time voters, might indeed sweep very clean and give Khan a chance. That is the theory of it.

The reality, as manifest in polls, seems to suggest that Sharif stands a stronger chance of coming back to power.  But those are polls and they have a knack of going very wrong. Let’s just say for the sake of argument that the polls are right until they are wrong. Sharif’s return to power will merely keep up the cyclical nature of the parliamentary form of government where there are no term limits. The limits are only on the tolerance of the people.

The last time I met Sharif was almost exactly 20 years ago in October, 1993. A cricket team of foreign correspondents based in New Delhi was invited by him to play a friendly match against his team. Sharif was an avid cricketer in his younger days. Unfortunately, his government ran into what turned out to be a terminal political crisis in 1993 during our visit and he could not play. He did, however, come to the cricket ground in Lahore to greet us during the game which ended in a draw. I managed to slip in a political question while still wearing my flannels. I asked him whether he hoped to overcome the crisis he was in. “Insha’Allah, Siyasat ek lamba khel hai. (God willing, politics is a long-term game)”. That two decades later he is still here, after having been dislodged in a bloodless coup by Pervez Musharraf and hounded out of the country, is compelling enough vindication of his observation.

Coming back to Khan, what I wrote on September 3, last year is worth repeating. (Even if it is not worth repeating, what are you going to do? Not read me?)

When one looks at the breakdown of the voter rolls, one cannot help but be struck by the sheer demographic and hence, by implication, political weight exerted by just two of the country’s six provinces. Punjab with its 48,308,644 registered voters and Sindh with its 18,432,877 registered voters alone account for 66,741,521 voters. That constitutes over 79 percent of the voting public. The other big number provinces are Khyber Pakhtun Khwa with its 12,064,597 voters and Balochistan with 3,278,164. The Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and Federal Area account for 1,675,967 and 604,802 registered voters.*

I am not quite sure what Khan considers his stronghold but I suspect that he is looking at a combination of the voters in the age group 18 and 45 who together add up to about 57 million. He is possibly also eyeing the votes out of the FATA and Khyber Pakhtun Khwa because lately he has positioned himself as strongly opposed to US policies such as the drone attacks. The drone attacks have impacted these areas quite a bit and have intensified anti-American sentiment. This is my surmise and I could be wrong.

Over the last 65 years Pakistanis have tried all kinds of leaders who have fallen woefully short. There may not be a particular danger in trying out a cricket superstar notwithstanding his nebulously defined political ideology. As a bowler Khan was regarded as one of the best swingers of the ball, particularly the reverse swing. Let’s see if he reverses the tide of history in Pakistan in the next general election.

I think it is only appropriate that I slightly rework the great Pakistani poet and rebel Faiz Ahmed Faiz here. The people of Pakistan, after voting Khan to power, could say, “Aur kya dekhne ko baqi hai? Imran se bhi dil laga ke dekh liya.” (What else is there to experience now?  We also tried falling for Imran).

* Since I wrote this, the electorate figures have changed somewhat. According to journalist Mariana Babbar in the Outlook magazine, they are now “Punjab with 49,229,334 has the highest number of registered voters, followed by Sindh: 18,963,375, Khyber-Pakhtoonkwala: 12,266, 157, Balochistan: 3,336,659, and FATA: 1,738,313 voters. The revised numbers do not affect the core of my political argument.

Creating is hard, selling it even harder

Creating is hard but selling your creation is harder. That’s because when you create any consumable content, be it an artwork or a blog or a film or a book, you are the only reference point. However, the moment you put your content in the market to be consumed, you multiply that reference point by a few million.

It has been a little over two weeks since I signed up with the online art sellers Saatchi (www.saatchionline.com). I knew that nothing would sell but was hoping everything would be snapped up in about six minutes. What I knew has turned out to be accurate so far. What I hoped has been belied.

Some of my friends would tell me that I was deluding myself if I thought I would sell. My response was and still is that all art is a result of delusion. To think that what you have written, painted, drawn or made may actually be paid for by even one person is an exercise in delusion. Of all things that might inhibit me from putting my stuff out, I think delusion should be the least inhibiting.

The wall of my digital paintings above showcases 17 works that are on sale at http://www.saatchionline.com/chhaya. As I said, not one has sold yet, not even a print. There could be any number of reasons for the poor showing. At the top of the list could be their unimpressive quality. Some of my works do have the potential to be wall art but my primary intention has been to create a range of designs that can be merchandized as linen, cutlery, cushions, upholstery, tiles and certain types of clothing. You can put it on tampons or condoms for all I care as long as you buy. You might say that such an approach dilutes the purpose of art. Well, I do not for a moment presume this to be art in that league.

One reason for no sale could be that there is just too much out there on the Internet. The world is bursting with talent just as our planet is bursting with life. It is like when everyone is talented, no one really is. I am not sure if my twisted logic extends to life as well—when everyone is alive, no one really is.

The point of this post is to tell you to just go to saatchionline.com and buy something, any damn thing, and not necessarily my work.

Note: Part 2 of my interview with Dr. Bhaswati Bhattacharya will appear next week after Hi India weekly has published it.

Ayurveda needs better articulators of its obvious strengths: Dr. Bhaswati Bhattacharya

I just did the following interview for Hi India weekly of Chicago and New York. A version of it was also done for Gaon Connection, India’s rural newspaper. This is part one of the two-part interview.

Dr. Bhaswati Bhattacharya (Photo Jay Mandal/On Assignment)

By Mayank Chhaya

As a leading practitioner of holistic family medicine in Manhattan, Dr. Bhaswati Bhattacharya necessarily takes a comprehensive view of life. “Holistic health is about acknowledging the interplay of mind, body, senses, and spirit in the healing process, as well as the disease-making process,” she says.

As she now prepares to embark on a Fulbright Program-sponsored journey of India to “explore the concept of Ojas, roughly correlated with current understandings of immunity”, Dr. Bhattacharya says she is looking forward to sitting at the feet of “ancient village masters.”

A passionate proponent of holistic science, who has straddled several academic worlds, Dr. Bhattacharya says she is hoping to return from a nearly year-long journey of India with much greater understanding of Ayurveda.

Her diverse academic qualifications are a testament to Dr. Bhattacharya’s abiding interest in expanding her knowledge base. She has a baccalaureate (BA) in the Biological Basis of Behavior from the University of Pennsylvania, a master’s degree in pharmacology and neuroscience (MA) from Columbia University with 6 years of graduate work in biotechnology, biomedical sciences and laboratory work toward a PhD, a master’s degree in international public health (MPH) from Harvard University and a medical doctorate (MD) from Rush Medical College in Chicago. Her residency trainings in family practice at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital and in community & preventive medicine at Mount Sinai have increased her skills to work fluently with the underserved. In addition, she has several certifications in holistic healing arts, according to her official backgrounder.

Dr. Bhattacharya spoke to Hi India in an extensive interview. Here is part 1 of a two-part interview.

HI: Reading your profile on your website, it strikes me that you lead a remarkably diverse life. Is it by design or default?

BB: Actually, my lifework is very much focused on the medical and health arena. However, running a holistic practice and gaining a fuller understanding of Ayurveda require diverse skills to allow me to get things done faster: writing, management, accounting, communications and as well as understanding different medical systems and how to implement Good Medicine in this broken medical system. But I think all smart people who went to good schools and are not lazy must have these skills.

The rest is probably part of being a Bengali, from a family where we were naturally expected to be familiar with reading, history, cultural arts, the sciences, travel, communication, practical arts, and a sense of the world around us. If you look at the Chausath Kalas of the vedas (the 64 kalaas that Krishna knew), we were trained in many of those just as part of being a learned person. So, it was my environment’s design and my default.

The only thing I know I chose consciously by design, to have diversity around me, was to live in Manhattan.

HI: How has your background as someone who has been involved in so many things informed your profession as a holistic health specialist?

BB: Holistic health is about acknowledging the interplay of mind, body, senses, and spirit in the healing process, as well as the disease-making process. It requires a perceptive and simultaneous extreme focus and overview to see the picture of the patient and find the cause of disease from what the patient does and does not say. I think my travels, my explorations, the traumas and failures in my own life give me the Tejas to be able to see the things that need to be seen in order to heal.

HI: Tell me about the mandate of your Fulbright scholarship. Is there any possibility that your work would help fill the empirical and scientific data gap?

BB: My research topic from my proposal is to explore the concept of Ojas, roughly correlated with current understandings of immunity. The logic of authentic Ayurveda will be demonstrated, observing clinical efficacy and translating into scientific terms required for physicians. Interviews with elders, discussions with scholars, and clinical research protocols will be published alongside proposals for educational curricula, inviting interdisciplinary collaboration between American researchers and India-based Ayurveda scholars. I will be required to stay in India. I am not sure yet what the parameters are; they are pretty secretive. Past Fulbright Scholars tell me I just need to focus on my own work and everyone will be happy.

HI: Despite its ancient vintage, in the Western eye Ayurveda still lacks the weight of serious medical science. Are we anywhere close to transforming that perspective?

BB: First, Ayurveda only lacks the weight of serious medical science in the eyes of those who have not used it through guidance from an authentic Ayurvedic practitioner. Don’t forget that Ayurveda is a $600 million industry just in India, according to 2010 figures of ASSOCHAM (The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India).

I think Indians have such a long history of being exploited and pillaged of their wealth from the British, and the Moguls, and the Persians, and the Greeks, that the smart ones just quietly keep their treasures for themselves now. No need to evangelize and be looted for it.

As I get closer and deeper into the ocean of Ayurveda, I am beginning to transform into the way of thinking of the ancient vintage: maybe not everyone deserves to heal from Ayurveda: it takes strength to see one’s own role in producing disease. It takes strength to see one’s own soul, and to find one’s purpose for being on the earth, one’s dharma. Those who do not want to see, may do better to stay blind, and leave the resources for those who do want to see. My teacher says, “Only when you take 10 steps toward Ayurveda, then only will Ayurveda take 20 steps toward you.”

Ayurveda is a science of practice-based evidence, meaning real practitioners and clinicians who saw real patients and observed real clinical outcomes, real healing. Modern medicine is a science of evidence-based medicine: first they design the study, then they exclude all the patients that would interrupt their theory, then they blind the researcher and the patient , then they randomly give a treatment to one vs. another person enrolled in the study. The study stops when they some statistician who has probably never practiced medicine decides they should. What happens in real life after the study is over is left out.

That is not good science, but it is the way the institution of science is evolving. It is the way the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has allowed medical science to progress. Scientists’ opinions are suppressed, bought and sold, and they sign contracts, so that they can’t even tell you their real opinion. When truth is no longer the microscope through which data are seen, there is farce in claiming what is evidence. Real evidence comes from watching, actually witnessing, incurable diseases being cured using authentic Ayurveda.

We can have a conversation about what modern medicine calls evidence. Why is it that young researchers now blindly accept rat models as substitutes for humans? Why don’t they examine the “normal” values of what they are told, such as respiratory rates and stool contents? How do they accept these normal values, when their clinical experience shows them other data? The problem actually is that in modern medicine, scientists don’t see patients, clinicians practice reimbursement-based medicine not true clinical medicine, doctors fight with nurses, and the systems are run by administrators who never really care about patients as much as they do about their salaries. And, all the CEOs and Presidents hire dilettante MDs with MBAs. Only people with real clinical skills who are keenly able to observe real patients, and keep themselves healthy, should be deciding what “serious medical science” is.

That said, I am excited to go to the ancient vintage masters, to sit at the feet of the elders in the small villages and the forests that remain. I am learning the methodical techniques and more skills on how to diagnose and treat diseases based on clues that the body and the patient’s environment give us. That is real. It is predictable and fills all the criteria of real science: there are accurate prognosis, reproducibility and reliable, non-toxic treatments in Ayurveda. As I learn over the coming years, I hope the thread connecting me to the land of modern medicine will pull me out of the sea periodically, and will still call me back to the medical world from time to time, to ensure that I don’t lose my critical, skeptical, scientist’s scalpel to observe and dissect the data of Ayurveda and put it at the arrogant feet of modern medicine. Only with the voice of both worlds will the modern medical world wake up to other possibilities of healing.

By the way, the clinical data for Ayurveda are out there, but modern medicine is unwilling to see them and cannot read them because they don’t know the language of energy-based medicine.

HI: To what extent do you think our inability to give it the empirical edge that the medical establishment in West looks for has prevented Ayurveda from gaining wider traction?

BB: If you mean empirical, which is based on observation, experiment, and practical medical experience, then the medical establishment violates many of its own rules. Modern medicine can hardly cure most of the diseases its own medicines create!

The greatest inability right now that has prevented Ayurveda from gaining wider traction is of Ayurvedic physicians to be able to explain their art of diagnosis and treatment clearly, in accurate translated of concepts captured in Sanskrit and impotent in English, and also in a style of communication that is not deafening. For example, I have yet to meet a very articulate and audience-appropriate teacher of Ayurveda, who can explain the physiology of the digestive process in authentic Ayurvedic terms. When that happens, modern medicine will have to listen. (End of Part 1)

Waking up to a dawn-hymn

I find that at dawn I always catch my mind in the midst of some unsynthesized thoughts. This morning, for instance, I woke up with two diverse poetic verses written more than three centuries apart and in two languages.

I woke up humming a popular song in Marathi language whose first lines say:

Ghanshyam Sundara Shreedhara Arunoday zhala

Uthi lavkari vanmali udayachali mitra ala

These are from a dawn-hymn written by the great Marathi cowherd poet Honaji Bala (1754-1844). For those of you interested watch the clip for a very approximate translation to get a sense about what he is saying. Essentially, the poet is capturing the unfolding of a pastoral morning with Krishna as his reference point. Ghansyam Sundara Sreedhara is Krishna. The viedo, I must caution you, is an acquired taste, particularly for those of my readers unfamiliar with Indian culture.

The second song that I was reciting in my mind almost simultaneously was:

Jaagi ne joun to jagat deesey nahi

Ungh ma atpata bhog bhasey

These were written by Narsinh Mehta (1414-1481), regarded as my home state Gujarat’s greatest poet-saint. One of the poet’s many fascinations was the idea that the universe is Maya, as in illusion or Leela, a grand cosmic spectacle. In these particular lines he describes his befuddlement at finding that the world has disappeared when he wakes up but in sleep how its bewilderments trouble him.

Interestingly, Narsinh Mehta too has written extensively about his devotion to Krishna and, in particular, about how one morning it was time for Krishna to wake up and tend to his cows. Dawn, Krishna and cows have been an enduring construct of what is known as the Bhakti (Devotion to the divine) movement in India’s enormously rich traditional literature.

Coming back to my tangential connection to these two songs, it is no more than the fact that I woke up this morning humming the lines for no apparent reason. If I must channel great poets, it is flattering that I do Narsinh Mehta and Honaji Bala.

Of course, my own poetry is informed by the sensibilities of my time where my milk arrives every Tuesday morning, delivered by an employee of the local Oberweis dairy. Picture, if you can, a scenario where I am waiting at 4.30 a.m. for the milk deliveryman and singing “Jaag ne jadva Krishna gowalia, Tujh vina dhen ma kon jashey? (Wake up O’ Krishna the cowherd, Who else but you would take the cows to graze?) A few police cruisers might show up with sheriff’s deputies saying, “Sir, please put down your delusions.”

Gayle force winds in Twenty20

Some of us remember what an improbable feat it was for a Test cricket team to score 100 runs before lunch in the 1970s. As I read about the Jamaican juggernaut (my description) Chris Gayle’s paralyzing 175 runs in 66 balls, with 17 sixes and 13 boundaries, it strikes me how benchmarks of quick scoring have changed so drastically.

Memory fails me what particular Test match it was but I remember vaguely that India was batting and Farokh Engineer was sent in to open. Engineer was a temperamentally Twenty20 player who often felt hemmed in by the sedate pace of Test cricket. The commentators sounded as if they were biting their nails while Engineer went about his characteristic stroke play. Again, at the risk of depending on fading memory, I think the Indians did score a 100 before lunch.

In contrast, Gayle took a total of 11 overs to score his unbeaten 175 for his team Royal Challengers Bangalore in the Indian Premier League against Pune Warriors. At an average of three minutes to an over we are talking about half an hour. In Test cricket the play time before lunch used to be two to three hours. You get some idea of how rapid the game has become that from being considered a rare feat to score 100 runs before lunch to one batsman alone scoring 175 in less than a third of that time. It is only logical that in order to get to 175 in 66 balls the batsman has to clobber the bowlers frequently over the boundary or through it. Ones and twos don’t help at all in Twenty20.

He scored his first 100 from 30 balls, which is five overs or about 15 minutes. In Test cricket some batsmen take that long to adjust their abdomen guard and pads. 

I no longer watch cricket in any form, which is as extraordinary as scoring a 100 before lunch because I used to be an avid cricketer myself before coming to America. The main reason I do not watch cricket now is because there is just too much of it. Benchmarks of excellence and speed are getting redefined with every match and it is hard to sit back and savor a performance. Perhaps the best way to enjoy is to choose just any one of hundreds of matches and watch it on the Internet without bothering about what it was part of and who won.

Chris has set a new standard for Gayle force winds in Twenty20 with his 175. (I wanted to get ‘Gayle force winds’ out of my system). Let’s see who tops this and how soon. Perhaps he will have to do it himself.

A weird rumination over space

I like this image because its individual constituents such as the keyboard, dice, my copy of Einstein’s book, a candle, a pair of glasses and a vajra are so disparate and yet make some sense together.

The main reason why I like to frequently read Albert Einstein’s slim volume ‘Relativity—The Special and General Theory’ is because it reminds me of my constricted intellectual horizon.

I have read this book several times for the past many years without moving anywhere close to comprehending the full measure of its fundamental concepts. One does understand it in bits and pieces and parts and portions but as a whole it remains outside my grasp. Of course, there are moments when everything stands utterly illuminated as if fully explained. However, they have invariably turned out to be false positives.

For instance, in the appendices to the book Einstein talks about ‘Relativity and the Problem of Space.’ He writes, “It is characteristic of Newtonian physics that it has to ascribe independent and real existence to space and time as well as to matter, for in Newton’s law of motion the idea of acceleration appears. But in this theory, acceleration can only denote “acceleration with respect to space.” Newton’s space must be thought of as “at rest,” or at least as “unaccelerated,” in order that one can consider the acceleration, which appears in the law of motion, as being a magnitude with any meaning.” I understand everything that is written here and yet not quite.

Then Einstein talks about how it is exacting to “ascribe physical reality to space in general, and especially to empty space.” “Time and agains since remotest times philosophers have resisted this presumption. Descartes argued somewhat on these lines: space is identical with extension, but extension is connected with bodies; thus there is no space without bodies and hence no empty space.”

One of the questions I have grappled with every time I read this book is what is space and whether it exists independent of solid bodies. Also, whether I have even understood my own question. I am not even sure whether it is being proposed in the book whether space can be ascribed reality and it is capable of being “directly experienced.” All the various objects on my desk, of the kind you see in the image above, variously define space. Take every single one of them away and imagine that there is absolutely nothing, do we still have space? Am I even asking the right question?

I am invariably left with such unsettled questions and unsatisfied mind after reading the book; like I said acutely conscious of my constricted intellectual horizon.

It was René Descartes who famously said, “I think, therefore I am.”  I do think but I am not sure if I am all there. And what about those who do not think? I see that they are still there.

Trying to make sense of Pervez Musharraf’s return

One obvious motivation that has brought former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf back home from exile is that he wants be relevant again. There is only so much excitement to be had by being on a Western lecture circuit for a four-star general used to a much stronger daily fix of adrenalin. His return and arrest at least ensure that unpredictability and uncertainty have returned to his life.

Of course, his specific objective is to rule Pakistan again but an even more important goal appears to be to become consequential again. It is fair to say that those who seek power, particularly men, are wired very differently than those who sit in their basement and speculate. Power is addictive and that addictiveness gets embedded at the elemental level. Sure, life in exile for Musharraf was good in a manner of speaking. There was an audience for his spiel about Pakistan. However, spiel loses its appeal after sometime. 

For now, it may seem that things are not going swimmingly well for him. The dubious distinction of becoming the first Pakistani four-star general to be arrested cannot be all good. And yet, there is probably some long-term calculation behind it. Pakistan, after all, is not unfamiliar with the idea of rehabilitating discredited rulers.

It is tempting to look for a grand design behind Musharraf’s return before the May 11 parliamentary election. I suspect though that it is no more grand than just reclaiming some relevance in his home country. His arrest does rudely interrupt his immediate plan but having once presided over a reflexively vindictive ruling structure himself I am sure he had factored that in. As I said men seeking and winning power are wired differently and they treat developments such as their arrest as a professional hazard. They are often successful at creating an aura of political sacrifice around what for less uninhibited and brazen people would be a terminal blow.

Musharraf is probably counting on the cynical deal-making that is so intrinsic to his country’s power elite. It could be that he may choose to languish a bit and then reemerge after some time. In his calculus, that could still be better than hopping across Western capitals in dapper suits hobnobbing with others in dapper suits. He is 69 years old and may be engaged in burnishing his legacy. I can only second-guess his motivations.

It is being suggested that he may have been subtly encouraged by the all powerful army as a counter to former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif whose party Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) or PML (N) is said to be regaining electoral ground. It was Musharraf who overthrew Sharif in October, 1999 in a bloodless coup d'état. I am not so sure that Musharraf’s mere presence will cramp Sharif’s style.

Exiles and returns are an amusing feature of Pakistan’s public life. First it was former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto who returned on October 18, 2007, after negotiating amnesty from corruption charges with Musharraf. A little over two months later she was assassinated in Rawalpindi. She had been in exile for nine years.

Sharif followed suit and soon returned on November 25, 2007 after being in exile for eight years. He had attempted to return once earlier on September 10 that year but was promptly deported from the airport to Jeddah by Musharraf.

Musharraf’s has returned after nearly four years. The good news is that exiles are getting shorter. That may also be the bad news because returnees inject confusion in the already chaotic political structure. There are those who think that former cricket superstar turned politician Imran Khan and and his Pakistan Teherik-e-Insaaf (PTI) could make significant inroads this time; perhaps enough to win.

I have no clue one way or the other. I can only read South Asian trends and use the luxury of distance to find long-term patterns in them. From that standpoint, what Musharraf seems to be doing is keeping his personal flag fluttering in the hope that the buffeting political winds may spare it even if they leave it in tatters. It is perhaps a lifelong soldier doing what a lifelong soldier does best—take things head-on.

The Horsehead Nebula as a painting

On its 23rd birthday the Hubble telescope has produced some stunning views of the universe. One in particular, that of the famous Horsehead Nebula, is extraordinary. Watch the video above. I was inspired enough to create this digital painting titled ‘The Horse Nebula’, now on sale on http://www.saatchionline.com/profiles/portfolio/id/419264.

The Horsehead is 1500 light years away from Earth. That means what we are seeing now is 1500 years old. Given the incomprehensible timescale of the universe and its distances, one can be reasonably sure that currently as it exists now the nebula looks pretty much the same. Unless something catastrophic has happened in the past 1500 years that has made the nebula disappear, it should continue to look like the epic horsehead in the constellation Orion.

It is the distant perspective from our planet that probably gives the nebula the equine contours. Close up it may just look and feel like a hazy emptiness.

The entire purpose of today’s post is to plug my digital painting. I am sure the Horsehead does not have an earthly agent who might demand an appearance fee for this superstar nebula in the sky in my painting.