Mayank Chhaya Daily

“Motu can also dance”

There was almost next to no prospect of Akshat ‘India’s Got Talent’ Singh failing on “Ellen.” It is not so much his dancing—which is fairly good—as the sheer joy he exudes while dancing that makes him compelling. In that he reminds me of Govinda. Of course, Govinda is a consummate dancer who also packs his performance with so much joy that it is impossible to resist when he is on screen.

Those who perform anything with unbridled joy seem to be asking you, “I am joyous. Why aren’t you?” Joy has extraordinary power to coopt anyone.

Without sounding mean-spirited I have never been an admirer of children performing. More often than their talent is not fully formed and yet the audience feels obliged to applaud the mere fact that they perform at all. There is the danger of being an asshole in not applauding a child performer. I could be that asshole. Cute is a poor substitute for talent if one has to endure it more than six seconds.

That said Akshat is a natural on stage. He has zero stage fright because he is so into himself. He also has natural charisma that comes from being uninhibited.

Watching his brief interview after his performance on ‘Ellen’ it struck me that  the audience missed out on a telling part of his answer to Ellen’s question whether he thinks he would win. Akshat replied, “I have gone to ‘India’s Got Talent’ only to show my talent to whole India… that Motu can also dance.” The audience got the operative part of his answer but not “…that Motu can also dance”. The “Motu” part was not translated. Motu is a Hindi word, often used mildly pejoratively in India, and it means a fat kid. Akshat has probably been called that many times and perhaps even derided for his dancing. This is his way of getting even. Good for the kid.

One would find thousands of children on the streets of India who can perform with equal ease and may be even with finer talent. It is not possible to showcase them all. Lucky for Akshat that he got picked up. Of course, he is not a street kid. From the looks of it he comes from a happy middleclass family. By his own admission he likes to eat well and that precludes any prospect of a penurious, hungry life that the often immensely talented street children have to endure. At the beginning of my journalistic career I used to write a daily column called “Street Walker” where I features those who live on Bombay’s streets but have some hidden talent. It was quite frequently that I met very talented children whose lives were devoured by poverty.

Cheap applause lines are..well..cheap

From left Bhishma Agnihotri, former Ambassador at Large for the Indian diaspora , Abhishek Manu Singhvi, a member of the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of India’s Parliament, and a Congress Party spokesman, and Abhishek Mishra, Minister of State for Science Technology for the Government of Uttar Pradesh, and the BBC Radio journalist who was not identified, Photo:- Jay Mandal/On Assignment

The omnipresent news photographer and dear friend Jay Mandal was in Boston to attend a conference on India at Harvard Kennedy School the other day. One of the panel discussions during the conference was on the theme "Global Implications of India's 2014 Elections". As Jay reports the discussion was moderated  by a BBC Radio journalist who asked the three panelists what they might do if they were India’s prime minister. The panelists were Abhishek Manu Singhvi, a member of the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of India’s Parliament, and a Congress Party spokesman, Bhishma Agnihotri, a former Ambassador at Large for the Indian diaspora appointed by former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Abhishek Mishra, Minister of State for Science Technology for the Government of Uttar Pradesh.

It was one of those silly but fun questions that gets asked at such conferences. It does not necessarily require a very thoughtful answer. It also does not necessarily require a partisan response. It can be dealt with a polite smirk or vague generalities because those who get asked such questions are mostly the kind of people who have almost no prospect of becoming prime minister other than by a bizarre quirk of fate. My point is it means nothing. And yet men like Agnihotri feel compelled to use such opportunity to take a cheap and unbecoming political shot.

As Jay reports, Agnihotri said India does not have a prime minister but “a prime servant” who serves “only a lady” and not the nation. First of all, thank you but that was not you were asked. You were asked what if you were the prime minister. Second of all, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India is not a “prime servant” in the manner of “servant” that Agnihotri implies to a “lady” who is the Congress Party president Sonia Gandhi. Third of all, and perhaps the most important, the assertion is nonsensical and factually inaccurate.

As the readers of this blog would know I hold no brief for any party but an honest assessment of Dr. Singh’s career would reveal at the very least that he has India’s general welfare at heart. He has spent decades in public service doing his best to ensure that the country rises to its potential. One may have a problem with Dr. Singh at several levels, including his policy choices and politics, but to cast him as a servant to one woman betrays a petty mindset. It is also unbecoming of someone who was officially appointed “Ambassador at Large” by another prime minister who himself kept the public discourse at a very high level throughout his long career and would never use such terms about Dr. Singh or any opponent.

Such cheap applause lines really contribute nothing to the discourse other than causing some sly amusement and sniggering. If the purpose was to gratuitously insult Dr. Singh I doubt if it was served. Instead, Agnihotri probably ended up embarrassing himself.

“No one knows, no one knows… Here”

Very much like the unintrusive melodiousness of this lovely song, its memory came softly this morning. Composed by the brilliantly talented Salil Chowdhury and written by the decidedly understated Yogesh for the 1972 movie ‘Annadata’, the song may not have the kind of recall value that other songs might have. However, as you listen to it you discover its charms.

The song opens with the soothing strains of the sitar and then moves to the flute and the violin with the visuals doing perfect justice to its mood. Obviously under instructions from director Asit Sen, cinematographer Kamal Bose keeps the frames spare. There are some effective text book editing cuts by editor Tarun Datta. The interesting part is that the light throughout the song is uplifting even though the song’s mood is somber and slightly despairing.

I began by mentioning the song’s unintrusive melodiousness. Listen to the bit from “Sach yeh kahin, Honge ya nahin, Koi jane na, Koi jane na….Yahan” (Will they (dreams) come true? No one knows, no one knows… Here”.

The change of the tempo between the two “Koi jane na” and then the finish “Yahan” is deeply satisfying. I don’t know about you but every time I hear a composition that has these little deft touches I sing along with it and smile as if I am the only one privy to its subtle beauty.

Chowdhury, who would be considered a great movie composer on any list, was known for such gentility. For instance, he, lyricist Yogesh and singer Mukesh created the same atmospheric quietude in the hit song “Kahin door jab din dhal jaye” in the 1971 ‘Anand’ directed by Hrishikesh Mukherjee. Watch below.

A man of messianic ordinariness ransacking through manicured Lutyens Delhi

Someone like Arvind Kejriwal by MC

I have to pretend that sitting in a nearly permafrost basement in Naperville and watching India’s politics coming to a frequent boil before the general election somehow gives me a unique political perspective. In reality, one is really struggling to remain relevant as a journalist. Hence this post.

Arvind Kejriwal is precariously close to being the craftiest politician onstage in India today. His resignation as Delhi’s chief minister in barely 50 days of taking charge is an inspired political move by a man who claims to abhor expedient politics. In a manner of speaking, he has pulled it out just in time after a marathon session.

After speaking the name that shan’t be spoken—namely that of India’s richest industrialist Mukesh Ambani and, in popular albeit exaggerated folklore, someone who practically owns the entire political system—Kejriwal managed to burnish his credentials as a renegade bomb-thrower on behalf of the powerless Indian. In failing to get his version of an ombudsman bill even tabled in the Delhi assembly because of the opposition by both the Congress Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party Kejriwal scored a huge success for his carefully plotted narrative.

All signs suggest that he knew that the ombudsman bill would be severely opposed by the two established political forces for their own reasons. So he built up a momentum and happily went off a political cliff. Here is a man who has no problem pushing the self-destruct button in a compelling demonstration of the Indian belief that regeneration ought to follow dissolution. The perception Kejriwal wants to plant in the popular mind is that he took on the forbidden and the formidable—both of that would be Ambani—and paid the price while trying to uphold the interests of the ordinary Indian.

“Main bahut chhota aadmi hoon (I am a small fry),” is an expression that Kejriwal uses frequently in his speeches and general public interaction. In many ways this confected humility is a uniquely Indian trait. Only those who have reached a certain level of consequence in their chosen field tend to make that assertion. Humility is a powerful pose in public life. While I am on the subject of creating a persona that plays into whatever grand design that Kejriwal has created for himself, either he is genuinely suffering from a chronic case of cough or that too is in aid of projecting vulnerability associated with hapless Indians roaming the country’s smoky streets. His woolen scarf covering his head and neck has become his trademark. I wonder what he would once the winter recedes and the summer creeps in. That might disturb his look. But then he can always replace the woolen scarf with a cotton one.

It is easy to mock Kejriwal and be dismissive of what can seem like antics. However, the fact remains that his emergence—in no small measure facilitated by the broadcast media—has rudely disrupted cozy power arrangements in the nation’s capital. As someone not invested in the existing political structure, Kejriwal enjoys enormous freedom to be reckless and nonconformist. That is why he can afford to quit in less than 50 days of taking over and say things like he and his colleagues have not slept for those many nights and still get feted and fussed over.

In a sense, he was lucky that the Congress and the BJP behaved predictably in not supporting his signature legislation. There was a possibility that the two parties could have checkmated him by going along with his bill. That is where Kejriwal took a judgment call and resisted the temptation of overestimating the two parties’ ability to be renegade in the same mold as himself. If nothing else, Kejriwal may have succeeded in creating a perception that he went down fighting for the ordinary Indian who elected him in the first place. Of course, it is a matter of debate whether that perception can be sustained for any length of time and scaled at the national level as he apparently prepares to take the national stage during the coming general elections.

An opportunity came his way in the form of an unclear mandate after the Delhi state election; an opportunity to strengthen his image as an angry, ordinary outsider breaking down the barriers of entrenched political interests. Everything that Kejriwal’s government did during its brief stay as Delhi’s government was to iterate that image. The conclusion of part one of the Kejriwal Theater Company’s first stage production was perfectly contrived in his resignation.

He addressed his followers from the window of his Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) office on Hanuman Road. The theme was that the entrenched political players did the ordinary Indian in as expected. They now have a new narrative that the entrenched players joined hands to save the billionaire Mukesh Ambani. As a bogeyman goes, Ambani is an effective one from the vantage point of the AAP whose members are both genuinely ordinary and now even perceived to be so. They are going for the rough hewn political look that works perfectly with their overall theme. It is true that most of what the AAP has begun to look like has come together fortuitously but I suspect someone with branding knowledge is now helping them. Kejriwal’s coughing too seems right on cue.

It may not seem like it so far but as a dispassionate outsider I am grudgingly applauding the rise of a political force in India that the entrenched players are struggling to deal with. Of course, one must not overestimate the political establishment monster’s capacity to eventually coopt the Kejriwalites. So far though the indications are that this man of messianic ordinariness is successfully ransacking through the manicured lawns of Lutyens Delhi much to the chagrin and empty rage of its comfortable occupants.

Pulped non-fiction: A few points about Wendy Doniger

A legion of this blog’s readers—if we redefine legion to mean between 3 and 6 readers and not the usual 3,000 to 6,000—has asked me why I have not commented on Penguin India’s decision to withdraw the Chicago Indologist Wendy Doniger’s book “The Hindus: An Alternative History”. They think because I live in Chicago and because I am hyperloquent* about such matters, I must say something. It is a fair expectation to which I have no particular response. I guess I am just bored with lofty debates.

Now that I have chosen to dwell on the subject, I might as well share a few ideas. One is, of course, my genuine incomprehension as to what this means for Doniger and Penguin in real practical commercial sense. The book has been around for a while and until it was given the kind of notorious visibility that Penguin’s decision to pulp it as part of a legally binding settlement has given it, I think its sale had already plateaued out.

What this settlement is likely to do is to a) Increase its sales to a frenzied pitch in the next six months within which the publisher is mandated to pulp it, which means all copies will be sold rather than scrapped and b) It is available elsewhere in the world, including on the net. The victory for the campaigner against the book, an 84-year-old retired school headmaster called Dinanath Batra, is at best symbolic. Its potential to continue to offend has not really been dented at all.

It is the existence of Section 295A of the Indian Penal Code which is the problem here. The section is against, “Deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings or any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs” and allows for a prison term of three years for those found guilty of violating it.

“Whoever, with deliberate and malicious intention of outraging the religious feelings of any class of citizens of India, by words, either spoken or written, or by signs or by visible representations or otherwise, insults or attempts to insult the religion or the religious beliefs of that class, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to three years, or with fine, or with both,” it says.

It is by invoking this section that Batra managed to compel Penguin India to withdraw the book. It is arguable whether in the absence of this particular section any petitioner could have forced the issue of religious hurt to this extent. The legal battle had been going on since 2009 and to the extent that Batra operated within the confines of the law of the land one cannot really characterize his campaign as fundamentalist lunacy. Of course, his motivation may have been entirely that or it is equally possible that he was acting out of a genuine sense of religious hurt.

One can vigorously argue the merit or demerit of whether an individual’s, or for that matter an entire community’s sense of offense should be allowed to come into conflict with an individual scholar or author’s freedom of speech. Or even whether religion should exist at all and if it should how personally it should be taken.The simple fact is that the case went to a court of law and the outcome is that the publisher in its wisdom chose to cave in for reasons which it finds justifiable and commercially prudent.

Whether Batra is a right wing nut case, whether the space for a liberal discourse is dangerously constricting in India and whether a section of India is getting Talibanized are questions quite extraneous to the main point that a Section 295A has been inserted into the country’s penal code. Why is it there on the statute books and, being there, can someone like Batra be blamed for using it to legally achieve his ideological objectives, however insane they might be?

It has been argued that this case will have a chilling effect on intellectual freedom and the freedom of speech. Probably so. Scholarship of any kind, particularly the one that concerns itself with religious and cultural matters, has always entailed all kinds of risks and dangers. Those who practice it do so fully mindful of this professional hazard. At best, democracy is about negotiated freedoms. Unless the liberals manage to secede from the rest of the cruel world and found Liberalistan, which I will happily shift to, they have no option but to operate within those negotiated freedoms.

On balance, Doniger’s book is unlikely to suffer any significant ill effects. As for other scholars wanting to pursue such scholarly and contrarian views of the world, they would have to be ready for the hazards that come with it. Freedom of speech is not intrinsic to the mere intention of wanting to be a scholar of any kind.

The right to offend for the sake of offending is a gloriously unachievable dream. I offend because I can and want to is not a creed hanging outside any country that I know of, including where I live. So let there be Liberalistan with its tourism slogan “Come to Liberalistan where you can offend because you can and want to.”

All that said, my final position is that I do not understand why you humans are the way you are.

P.S.: I reached out to Dr. Doniger via email on the day the story broke. She did not respond. Her handlers did not even send me her official statement. So much for my standing as a veteran journalist.

* Not a word but I coined it here quite sometime ago.

Two new works on sale

Two latest by me

With a ferocious migraine attack this morning, I do not feel like writing much. So let’s do with two new paintings I have uploaded on my personal web store.

The one on the top is inspired by Wes Anderson’s latest film ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’. ‘Smoker’ is just a random work about a guy smoking.

If I manage to sell either one of them or, for that matter, any other work on display in my store, it could significantly improve my migraine.

“In place of an individual, there exists a succession of instants of consciousness”

Ananda Coomaraswamy (Photo: Alvin Langdon Coburn)

The idea of Anitya or Anicca* or Impermanence has captured my imagination for as long as I remember. That it is at the core of Buddha’s philosophy is something I discovered only when I was 18 or 19. I have since reflected on it many times, including the whole of yesterday and this morning. Hence this post.

It is a spectacularly brilliant explanation of everything there is as long as you understand that everything there is is there in that passing moment and hence it is really not there. The idea of Anitya can be deeply disturbing; especially because it removes what we like to call the essence. It can be deeply affecting for those stuck in the morass of corporeal certitudes about reality.

As part of my overall reading for the Dalai Lama biography ‘Man Monk Mystic’ I read many books. However, the one that has managed to make an impact is the 1916 edition of “Buddha and the Gospel of Buddhism” by the extraordinary scholar of Indian culture and arts Ananda Coomaraswamy (22 August 1877 − 9 September 1947).

There is a lot to reflect over in this book first published in London by George G. Harrap & Company. For the purposes of this post I would like to reproduce a brief passage about Anitya or Anicca. I must caution that it may sound rather abstruse at first but invest some thought in it and the idea will stand utterly illuminated. Of course, your comprehension will disappear as soon as you have attained it.

How essential in Buddhism is the doctrine of the eternal succession of causes appears from the fact it is often spoken as the gospel:

“I will teach you the Dhamma,” says Gautama, “That being present, this becomes; from the arising of that, this arises. That being absent, this does not become; from the cessation of that, this ceases.”

We read again that “Dhamma-analysis is knowledge concerning conditions.”

What he thought was designed to avoid the two extreme doctrines of realism and nihilism, the belief in phenomenal being and the belief that there is no phenomenal process at all. “Everything is: this, O Kaccana**, is one extreme view. Everything is not: this is the second extreme view. Avoiding both these extremes the Tathagata*** teaches the Norm by the Mean.” This doctrine of the Mean asserts that everything is a becoming, a flux without beginning (first cause) or end; there exists no static moment when this becoming attains to beinghood—no sooner can we conceive it by the attributes of name and form, it has transmigrated or changed to something else. In place of an individual, there exists a succession of instants of consciousness.

“Strictly speaking the life of a living being is exceedingly brief, lasting only while a thought lasts. Just a chariot wheel in rolling rolls only at one point of the tire, and in resting rests only at one point; in exactly the same way, the life of a living being lasts for the period of one thought. As soon as that thought has ceased, the living being is said to have ceased.

“As it has been said:

“The being of a past moment of thought has lived, but does not live, nor will it live.

“The being of a future moment of thought will live, but has not lived nor does it live.

“The being of the present moment of thought does live, but has not lived, nor will it live.

We are deceived if we allow ourselves to believe that there is ever a pause in the flow of becoming, a resting place where positive existence is attained for even the briefest duration of time.”

Life as a series of moments always transmigrating is an astounding concept. Think about this assertion: “In place of an individual, there exists a succession of instants of consciousness.” It is poetic, profound and purely cerebral. Look at his explanation of moments which have passed, which are,  and which are yet to to be. It is so finely sliced. This is the mind of someone to whom everything stood fully explained.

I am willing to assert that as a purely cerebral living goes, there has been nothing that has surpassed Buddha since Buddha with the possible exception of Albert Einstein. In the timeline that we understand, that would be some 2500 years. It is ironic that for someone who emphasized the idea of Anitya or Anicca or Impermanence above all else seems to have lasted quite a while.

I would strongly recommend Coomaraswamy’s outstanding book to anyone who is interested in, for want of a better word, the gospel of Buddhism. I have always found it odd that a philosophy of impermanence should be given a traditional structure. But that is a separate discussion.

* Words such as Anicca or Dhamma are the Pali language versions of Anitya and Dharma

** Kaccana is Pali for Katyayana who was a disciple of Buddha.

*** Tahtagata is how Buddha referred to himself. It is interpreted to mean many things but mostly it is “The one who has thus gone” or “The one who has thus come.”

Crow and pie on menu for Narendra Modi-Nancy Powell meeting

Diplomacy is expedient, not moral. No other country knows it better than the United States. That explains why Washington is now beginning to court Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi after keeping him away from America for nine years.

In a solid scoop, The Hindustan Times newspaper yesterday broke the story that U.S. Ambassador to India Nancy J. Powell had sought and had been granted a meeting with Modi. For those of you who may not still know it despite reading this blog, Modi is the chief minister of the Indian state of Gujarat and is the prime ministerial candidate for India’s main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). By some consensus he could well become India’s next prime minister.

Since 2005, Modi remains disbarred from visiting America under a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act relating to foreign government officials "who have committed particularly severe violations of religious freedom." The 2002 Gujarat riots, under his watch, were the primary cause that triggered this particular section.

It is against this backdrop that Powell’s meeting with the chief minister should be seen. Everything about the U.S. overture is obvious and expedient. Three months or so before India elects a new prime minister, Washington seems to sense that Modi might just make it as the next prime minister. It is a calculated move meant not to take sides before the elections but establish the channels of communication in case Modi does indeed win. Obviously, the U.S. does not want to be caught in a terribly uncomfortable position of having to deal with the elected leader of the world’s largest democracy whom it has officially banned from the American shores.

At the very least the U.S. decision to deny the chief minister a visa was a curious one considering that it has no moral compunctions supping with all manners of unapologetically cruel despots who do Washington’s bidding. For the better part of the last nine years the U.S. diplomatic establishment maintained the view that Modi is not so important as to be accorded any diplomatic niceties. He was viewed as a minor satrap in its strategic engagement with India. I would argue that for a length of time those who concern themselves with such matters mistakenly thought that there was no chance of Modi rising to lead India. Now that there is a very real possibility that Washington may well have to deal with him as prime minister, the diplomatic machinery is being lubricated with lumps of expediency.

The U.S. ambassador, obviously under instructions from the highest levels of the Obama Administration, had to seek a meeting with the chief minister. I can guarantee that there would not have been any high-fiving in the chief minister’s office because smug rejection of U.S. endorsement has been the default temperament of that office. Modi is astute enough to know that Washington had zero option other than seeking him out before the parliamentary elections.

Modi may not have explicitly expressed them but if his overall behavioral arch is any guide he does harbor deep antipathies toward Washington on account of the visa denial issue. As I had said earlier a Modi administration would make the U.S. wait outside the door of his South Block office longer than they are accustomed to. The meeting between Powell and Modi is unlikely to repair the core damage caused to the chief minister’s sense of self by the visa denial. He may not hold grudges in the petty sense of the word but Washington should be not surprised if as prime minister Modi is decidedly less amenable to U.S. demands than Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has been.

I was joking with my journalist friends yesterday that when Powell meets Modi in either Gujarat’s capital Gandhinagar or Ahmedabad, she can expect a sumptuously cooked crow served on a silver platter. No matter how one looks at it, the U.S. is having to eat crow over the Modi affair. As a good host Modi might make it easier by serving an humble pie for dessert.

Between Ctrl. Z and Ripple Delete, life can be terrific

Illustration by MC, using clipart images

There are some terrific functions on the personal computer that ought to be incorporated in the human brain. As the idea of the technological singularity gains traction with every passing day,the one function that I would like to be equipped with immediately is the Ctrl. Z or “Undo” function. As ambitions for the technological singularity go this is a laughably minor desire but still it has enormous implications.

I have been so used to the Undo function that these days even while being in the midst of a real life interaction or a situation I press Ctrl. Z both in my mind and in action.The other day I was drawing something on real paper and a line went astray. My fingers automatically try to press Ctrl. Z on an imaginary keyboard.  That sounds pathetic—my virtual enslavement by the PC—but that’s how it is.

To be able to go back to any time in one’s life and alter the course of events by undoing certain developments is quite a power. Last July, I wrote about another evolutionary update that I would be thrilled to have. Here is what I wrote:

Leading a well-edited life has been my longstanding fascination. For as long as I remember, I have always wanted the ability to edit life in real time. It in this context that as part of human evolution, I think it is time for all of us to develop the ability to ripple delete our life.

Ripple delete is a video editing function which allows you to delete chosen items from a track without leaving a gap. It automatically shifts the items after the deleted point to the left in their entirety.

This might not make any sense to most of you who are unused to editing audio and video. Let me explain a little more before I return to the main theme of the blog. When you edit any track your primary purpose is to give the raw material a narrative and visual logic and consistency, not to mention cinematic drama. Lift edit, which is another function of editing, allows you to edit but leaves gaps between two points. This can throw the track to the right of the delete point out of sync.

With that, hopefully, comprehensible explanation, I can now dwell a bit on how evolution can at least equip us with these little improvements if not create a superhuman altogether. For now, I would be happy with the ability to edit my life with functions such as ripple delete. The idea is to be able to delete unwanted experiences even as they are occurring. While editing one has to be mindful that it does not throw other experiences which are to follow out of sync or leave gaps like in the visual above.

Can you imagine what the ability to live-edit your life can do to transform it so fundamentally? There are thousands of situations and experiences throughout our life which we wish had not happened. With real time ripple delete all of those can be avoided. You can ripple delete entire periods of history without anyone noticing the gaps.

Even as I am writing this I sense some of you are going ‘Wait, what?” but as you reflect on it you would begin to appreciate the value of this ability.

Another improvement, I wish human evolution would soon lead to is eliminate the need to discharge bodily waste, prevent bodily hair in certain parts and/or all parts and stop sweating altogether. These changes sound minor but have radical implications for the species generally and perhaps even the planet.

You might argue that the human brain has the innate ability to ripple delete. It is called thinking before acting. May be so, but there are experiences that occur irrespective of your best efforts to either preempt them or alter them. That’s where the ripple delete would come in handy.

We should have two clearly defined options when it comes to individual life—one is the raw life as it unfolds and the other, which runs parallel and in simultaneity, that we can edit. You might argue that I am going precariously close to the multiple personality disorder. I am not. I am merely suggesting a two-track life, one track consisting an organic passage of time and the other what I called an intervened passage of time. The latter might sound like contrived or manufactured. It is to the extent that it takes what is available and refashions it.

I think I should end the track here and fade into black.

Mendibular…Temporo Mendibular

Illustration MC

As cool sounding diseases or disorders that don’t kill you go, I think I have found my most favorite. What is exciting is that I have it. It is called Temporomandibular Disorder (TMD).

The way I test whether a word or a name is cool is by breaking it into two and saying it this way: “The name is Bond, James Bond” or just “Bond, (cool pause), James Bond.”

“Mandibular (cool pause), Temporo Mendibular.” That works for me.

This disorder is likely when your jaws make a crunching sound as you chew or yawn or even talk. The clicking/crunching sound has been going on for a while but I truly discovered it yesterday while yawning. Every yawn was accompanied by this distinct crunching sound on the left side of my face. They make that sound even when I am thinking. It was as if my jaws were grinding remnants of useless thoughts. It is not painful yet but there is distinct discomfort. It feels as if your jaws are slowly pulverizing themselves.

I searched “crunching jaw sound” and found what I think is the perfect diagnosis. It came up on the website of the Canadian Dental Association. This is how the site explains it:

TMD (temporomandibular disorder)

The jaw joints and groups of muscles that let us chew, swallow, speak and yawn are known as the temporomandibular. When there's a problem with how the joints and muscles work, you may have a temporomandibular disorder or TMD.

Symptoms

The symptoms of TMDs are:

• tender or sore jaw muscles. Your jaw may be even more painful when you wake up, clench your teeth, chew your food or yawn.
• problems opening or closing your mouth. It may be hard to open or close your jaws all the way, or your jaws may lock open or closed.
• headaches that you cannot explain. You may also feel pain in your neck. These may be caused by TMD, or by other problems. Tell your dentist AND your doctor.
• a clicking or grinding noise when you chew or yawn. You may hear strange noises in your jaw joints, such as clicking or popping when you open your mouth, or crunching and grinding sounds when you chew.

Cause and Effect

The cause of TMD is not always clear, but in most cases stress is a major factor. Here are some of the things that MAY cause it:

• clenching and grinding your teeth. Clenching your jaw muscles can cause them to ache. Some people grind their teeth or clench their jaw muscles when they are under stress.
• injury to your face or jaws. Broken (or fractured) jaws, a jaw joint that has been knocked out of place (or dislocated) and "whiplash" may cause TMD.
• some diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis, may affect the jaw joints and muscles.
• if your jaw does not grow the right way, your teeth may not line up the way they should. This can make it hard to bite and chew, and may lead to TMD.

Other things that MAY lead to TMD are:

• worn, loose, or missing teeth
• gum problems
• partial or full dentures that are not the right fit
• habits such as biting on your pen or pencil

Now that I have read that “stress is a major factor” behind TMD and clenching or grinding one’s teeth can cause it, I realize that I may be clenching and grinding a lot unconsciously. Reflecting over what might be causing it, it seems I clench and grind most when I am answering calls from creditors. The other day one such caller said my line was not good because she was getting a lot of static. Looking back it was not the static but my clenching and grinding. The lesson here is that do not get into debts. They cause TMD.

The expression I can hear myself thinking has a rational explanation now because it actually makes a grinding sound.