Mayank Chhaya Daily

A few observations about Vijay Seshadri and poetry in general

Poetry is an unnecessary talent. Having written it since 13, I think I have earned the right to say this. That said, not all talents should be judged for their worldly utility. The real worth of poetry lies in its inspirational quotient.

I have not done a scientific study to say this but I am fairly certain that great poetry has inspired people to do great things. The poet is necessarily is an inspirer or an illuminator. Poetry is a catalyst. If a single poetic line inspires people with genuine utility-oriented talents to do great things that help humanity at large, then poetry serves its purpose as does the poet. However, it is not the poet’s business to do things. Poets lead a life of conceit where doing worldly/mundane/utilitarian things is anathema. I am reminded of a couple of jokes that the great poet Raghupati Sahay Firaq Gorakhpuri used to tell about poets. In one, a man falls into a well. A poet happens to pass by and he too falls into the well. Rather than looking for ways to rescue themselves, the poet declares that he would recite some verses from his poetry because he had found a captive audience. The other funny incident that Firaq narrates is about a haunted house which no one wanted to buy. A poet, unable to find any home for himself, he decides to buy it. He then drives the ghosts away by reciting his poetry.

In Hindi/Urdu and occasionally in Gujarati/English, I regard myself as a poet of unpredictable merit. When I am good, I produce some truly outstanding lines and literary constructs on a par with the best in the world. However, it is rare that I am good. Mostly, I am an efficient versifier who can engage prosaic minds for a short while. I say all this because I have been reading coverage about the poet Vijay Seshadri who has just the Pulitzer Prize. Prizes do not mean much other than what they do as a consequence of their being conferred. They help bring attention and concentrate a distracted public’s mind about something or someone.

For instance, I did not know about Seshadri until two days ago. Now I do. Pretty soon, I may not know much about him again unless what he writes engages me. I read some of what he writes and I think I am ready to move on. Notwithstanding the high praise he has received—and likely deservedly so—his poetry, or at any rate what I have read, is not for me. I do not judge poetry. I merely decide whether it is or it is not for me. Coming from the subcontinent—that would be South Asia—my ears are attuned to the cadence of the languages of the region when it comes to poetry; in particular Hindi, Urdu and Gujarati. Unless poetry has certain incantational rhythm or cadency I struggle to like it.

I read some of Seshadri’s work and felt a sense of unbridgeable distance. It is no reflection on him so much as my inability to get into his realm. For instance, his ‘Descent of Man’ which begins with these lines:

My failure to evolve has been causing me a lot of grief lately,

I can’t walk on my knuckles through the acres of shattered glass in the streets

This is obviously a poetically inventive/evocative thought. Seshadri seems like a poet who expects you to know and understand the context within which his poems are set. You might ask if that is not the expectation of all poets. I am not so sure. The lines above have the merit of being meaningful in themselves even without being presented as part of a whole. That is certainly good poetry. My problem with it is mainly in terms of its rhythm. If I can’t get into the rhythm of the poetry, I generally avoid getting into its thought altogether.  That is my failure and not the poet’s.

I am reminded of a ghazal I wrote sometime ago. It said:

खुश्क पत्तों के जंगल मे

दबे पाओं चलते हो

यह क्या करते हो?

Khushk patton ke jungle mein dabey paon chalte ho

Yeh kya karte ho?

(You walk tiptoed in a forest full of dry leaves,

What’s the point?)

As I mentioned before, for me the cadence and incantational quality of poetry is as much an attraction as its underlying sentiment or thought. Indian poetry tends to have that quality in large measure. It may have something to do with the Sanskritic origin of Indian languages as well as the oral transmission of ancient literature. In this context, I was struck by what the Open Magazine’s Divya Guha quoted Indian poet and writer Jeet Tahyil as saying about Seshadri who happened to be his teacher as well. Thayil said among the best things that Seshadri taught him as a student was that “the border between poetry and prose is not rigidly policed, it is breachable and porous.” That’s a fair point. Poetry is nothing but well-oiled prose.

Reading this post if you cannot tell whether I am praising Seshadri or not, it is not your fault. I am genuinely happy that a poet has got his due. Whether I enjoy his poetry is extraneous to his getting his due. The cause of poetry is more important than the cause of the poet.

Life is shared approximation

A painting I did yesterday. It began as a black half sphere at the bottom right of the frame and became this eventually

Breaking dawn and falling dusk* are such lovely ways of experiencing Earth’s rotation. Dawn and dusk and everything else in terms of the way sunlight changes its appearance is specific to a celestial body in this particular solar system; Earth, in our case. There are hundreds of billions of solar systems, which may or may not be anything like ours, with their own versions of day and night.  Of course, there is no sunrise or sunset in space the way we define them because they are both experiences unique to the shape, distance and rotation of any body in the universe relative to the brightest object in its vicinity. Notwithstanding this knowledge, it is always a glorious experience what we earthlings with quaint inaccuracy call sunrise and sunset. I say inaccuracy because there is really nothing rising or setting other than from our vantage points in the solar system relative to the sun, the brightest object in our vicinity.

Being an early riser (again a misnomer because I don’t know what early riser really means in the grand cosmic scheme) I routinely experience our sky getting ever so subtly illuminated. It is like a cosmic brush of photons sweeping over our horizon from mauve to orange to yellow to finally just white glare. As the dusk falls, the order of the colors of sunlight seems to be reversed from white to yellow to orange to mauve. Once again, this experience is specific and unique to Earth simply because each celestial body will have its own combination of different hues depending on the constitution of its atmosphere, it axis, its position in relation to the sun and so on. For instance, the lunar sky looks mostly black because there is no atmosphere to give it the kind of breathtaking resplendence that we experience everyday. 

Inevitably, all such experiences bring me back to the lifelong realization that reality depends entirely on who you are and where you are. I can only approximately guess whether your reality is the same as or even largely similar to mine. It certainly feels so intuitively when it comes to larger realities such as sunrise or sunset within reasonably geographical proximity. We must all be conscious that there is no overarching reality that is common to us all. It is determined by so many other factors. The best we can do is to look for shared approximation. If all this sounds strange, you may blame it on the occasional dizziness that Earth’s rotation of about 1700 km per hour (about 100 miles per hour) relative to its axis causes in me. We forget that that’s how fast we all move at any given moment. We do not feel it because it is a constant movement. We are forever getting flung but since that is built into us we do not seem to be discomforted by it.

* Why must dawn break and dusk fall? I don’t know.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Blame you I couldn’t if the beginning of this post reads like a textbook case of name dropping. I do it purely because it is factual and not because of the person involved in this little anecdote was of considerable consequence in India for quite sometime.

The late Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao was famously polyglot. A voracious reader with some scholarly affectations, Rao was known to have sought the original Spanish version of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ to read. I asked him once if that was indeed the case and he replied through his trademark pout that it was. “It is even more magical in Spanish,” is what Rao told me sometime in 1992-93. Of course, he clarified that his Spanish was not as good as his English, Urdu, Marathi, or Telugu. He also learnt French. It was on his recommendation that I read two of Marquez’s books ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ and ‘Love in the Time of Cholera’.

It is funny how I instantly thought of Rao on reading the news of Marquez’s passing at age 87. Reading for me, like everything else in life, is a transient activity. I make no effort to remember details of what I read but more often than not a lot sticks in some recess of one’s mind. I do not remember plots in great detail. So I could not tell you off the cuff what I liked about the two works of the Latin master. I remember bits such as the opening line of ‘Love in the Time of Cholera’: “It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.”

I remember it because it involves a scent, any scent since scents have long been the reference points of many events in my life. For instance, I remember Marquez through the scent of a clove that Rao was chewing.

I am not what you might call an intelligent reader in so much as it means being able to persist with novels. While I finished both of Marquez’s famous books, I would not be bold enough to say that I remained seriously engaged throughout. This is an affliction I have written about here before. I am desultory and shallow by nature.

It is never a great writer who fails me but it is I who fail a great writer. I am just not able to keep it together in terms of attention to what is being narrated even though I tend to remember things quite graphically. I remember enjoying both these books sporadically in passages but not enough to make any literary judgment. Not being able to judge literature is an old failing of mine. Also, I find that I am not invested enough in what is grandly called “the  human condition” to be able to rustle up any cogent emotions at the passing of someone, anyone. Of course, I am aware of Marquez’s enormous standing as a writer globally and what his death means for literature generally.

I admire people who feel personally affected or aggrieved by the passing of others, particularly artists and litterateurs. For instance, my dear friend and fellow journalist Kajal Basu said this on his Facebook update about Marquez’s death: “One never gave a thought to the possibility of his dying. Never a thought to his age. Not to his condición humana (never thought he had one, warts and all, as we do). The day seems darker now.”

This is genuine and heartfelt. I am not sure if I can ever say something like this without sounding transparently bogus.

I get lost in tangents such as the mention of Prime Minister Rao here while writing about Marquez. Within my extremely minor capacity as a reader of great literature, all that I can do at Marquez’s passing is  quote a line from ‘Love in the Time of Cholera’: “Humanity, like armies in the field, advances at the speed of the slowest.”

I am the slowest kind that Marquez may have been referring to.

A Brown Girl’s endeavor

Aditi Mehta, Founder, Brown Girl Magazine

I did the following interview for the new portal The Indian Diaspora. The Indian Diaspora is the first news and informational portal of its kind that covers the more than 25 million people of Indian origin worldwide on one platform.

By Mayank Chhaya

Young South Asian women, either born here in America or having migrated early on, have rapidly emerged as a distinct group within the diaspora that has a unique set of opportunities and challenges. Although there are ethnic South Asian publications that occasionally reflect their concerns, Brown Girl Magazine founder Aditi Mehta believes they constitute a distinctive and substantial enough group to merit a platform devoted exclusively to them.

Founded six years ago, Brown Girl Magazine has carved a niche for itself by addressing themes which go well beyond the inevitable subjects of fashion and entertainment. What is unique about Brown Girl is that it is an entirely voluntary effort where young South Asian women, whose families originate from all parts of the seven South Asian countries, write about wide-ranging subjects which have a direct bearing on their lives.

It is an online publication that balances competing interests among South Asian women in the age group 17 to 24, which also happens to be potentially attractive for marketers.

Based in Texas, Mehta answered questions from The Indian Diaspora. Excerpts:

Brown Girl has been around for six years now. What has been its experience in chronicling the aspirations of a sharply defined demographic constituent of American life?

At Brown Girl, we have tried very hard over the years to identify and develop content that would reach out to young South Asian women across the US. We were one of the first publications that wanted to cover stories about South Asian women, the issues they face, and that wasn't just another fashion or entertainment blog. It was very difficult to start from scratch and figure out what we could do for this audience. Over time, what really helped was that all of our writers are young South Asian women themselves, each with unique backgrounds and really wanting to share their personal stories. If we didn't have such a passionate staff, BG wouldn't be where it is today!

What prompted you to give it the kind of specificity that the very name suggests?

Brown Girl is an endeavor that began as a way to provide a community and platform for young women of similar cultural backgrounds to voice their stories and opinions. As an avid reader, I often felt that young South Asian women were left out of important discussions or that issues that were important to them were disregarded completely. Hence, this magazine – a publication completely dedicated to and created by young women of South Asian descent. Initially, when titling the magazine I wanted to create a title that was inclusive to all South Asian women, whether they were Indian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, Bangladeshi, Nepali, etc. I did not want a title that referenced to a specific language or region.

Furthermore, the magazine was to be created for all young women regardless to the level they associate themselves with their culture. For example, many Brown Girls may not identify themselves with being “Indian” or “Hindu” but just a girl that was born and raised in the United States with parents from India. Some of our readers are girls that have been raised with deep understanding of their culture and a passion for what it’s about. For other girls, they may have been the only Brown Girl in their high school and this is their first exposure to other Brown Girls.

Do brown girls have a set of experiences/challenges that are unique to their ethnography as well as their color?

I definitely believe so. I feel that brown girls haven't always been included in many different parts of life, especially in American society. When it comes to entertainment and media brown girls were invisible or very much a stereotype. Much of this is changing now. And it is great to see that Brown Girl could be part of the shift where you see people like Mindy Kaling on everyday television.

How has been the response from the target audience?

We have grown tremendously over the years. Much of our growth has come from word of mouth and we really want to continue to reach even more young South Asian women in the US. We get letters frequently telling us how happy women are to find Brown Girl and have something they can truly relate to and find inspiration from.

Are you, after spending a fair bit of time reflecting a certain segment of South Asian immigrant community, able to say that brown girls are united by common challenges?

For the most part yes, but of course we all have our separate issues and concerns. For example, I think Muslim brown girls have their own challenges that maybe others can't truly understand. As children of immigrants, many brown girls in the US do have certain challenges that overlap and that's what the magazine hopes to address. This can include balancing cultures, following dreams when it comes to career, or even trying to find love.

Since you address the age group between 17 and 24 what according to you are the most compelling issues for young women in this group?

This is a tough one, because I don't think there is necessarily just one issue that is most compelling. I'd say depending on where you are in your life, your challenges can change. For example, younger women might find themselves battling it out with their traditional parents or trying to fit in school. Slightly older women may now be facing pressure in terms of marriage and relationships.

How do the conflict/pressure/strengths/weaknesses of growing up between two cultures play out in daily life for these young women?

I can't speak on behalf of all South Asian women; everyone's experiences can be different. But what I do know that there is often times this tension in balancing several parts of my identity: American, Indian, Hindu/Muslim, young woman, etc. This puts a lot of pressure on the decisions I make such as who to date, my career path, or even whom I would be friends with.

For instance, how is life in that age group different for women in South Asia and here?

There are definitely big differences in growing up in the US rather than in a part of India. I think many of us (again I don't want to speak for an entire group), are extremely lucky to have access to resources, support, and opportunities that the US brings.

Yours is a fully volunteer staff. Tell us about the challenges of maintaining consistent quality with a volunteer staff.

It's definitely been a challenge over the years to maintain consistency and continue to attract quality writers. We are finally looking into ways to make our magazine more sustainable so that we can pay our writers and staff for all the work they contribute. Right now, we have a diverse group of young women who attend colleges or work across the country. It's great to see their stories come to life on our site. We hope to offer an audience for writers that they might not be able to reach otherwise. Writers are contributing right now to share their stories and get across the positive message that Brown Girl is about.

Do you believe brown girls form enough critical mass for mainstream corporations to pay particular attention in terms of their needs and wants in different walks of life--from entertainment to jobs?

I do - there is a huge population of South Asian women in the US - growing up, going to school, and starting their professional lives. We've only scratched the surface. As more South Asian women come into mainstream media, the easier it will be to grow this audience.

For instance, how would the rise of someone like Mindy Kaling or at the other end of the spectrum the emergence of astrophysicist such as Sukanya Chakrabarti play out in this context?

Things are so different from when I was in high school. When I was in high school, you would never really hear about successful South Asian women in the news or in media. Things are changing dramatically - with Mindy, Sukanya, Priyanka Chopra, news correspondents on CNN, etc.

Being brown and on TV will soon no longer be a novelty. And this is very important in solidifying Brown Girl's identity. We are an important part of society, we deserve to be recognized for our contributions, and we hope to continue to share information that is important to us. And with more recognition from mainstream media, Brown Girl Magazine hopes to be the publication that people turn to learn more about those women.

Viagra ice cream party where motive is too hard to hide

‘The Arousal’ by Charlie Harry Francis (Pic: http://lickmeimdelicious.com)

Reading about the Viagra-laced ice cream, specially created for a client by U.K.-based food inventor Charlie Harry Francis, my first thought was predictably crass. It was not the cone that ice-cream eater was holding.

Estimated to cost $33 a scoop, the champagne-flavored, blue colored ice cream has obviously aroused a lot of interest. Francis, who runs an ice cream company called “Lick Me I’m Delicious'”, does not mass-produce this variety and I am not sure if he intends doing it on a regular basis for other clients. However, reports are that the unnamed client who ordered the ice cream and also provided Viagra was “very happy” with the result. It is not known with whom the client shared his happiness.  It is also not known whether the ice cream was ordered individually or as part of an exclusive party. If it was the latter, then the scene of many erect men walking about would have been rather hilarious.

Each scoop contained a 25 mg dose of Viagra, which is the normally prescribed amount.  Francis wrote on his blog,  “This was one of the weirder requests we've had; to make Viagra ice cream for a party. It was for one of our A-list Celebrity clients and they've made us sign a confidentiality agreement, so we can't say much about it, but I am allowed to say that they were 'very happy with the end result.”

Viagra ice cream could become a party trend. The one good thing about such parties would be that each guest would know the motive of the other guests. In any case, pretty soon the motive would be too hard to hide. (It’s funny how puns just write themselves when it comes to the theme of sex).  It is a small mercy that the ice cream was not hard. Could it be that Viagra ice cream may not have to be frozen to keep it hard?

I can see this catching on in India with its astonishingly diverse variety of desserts. One suggestion—don’t put it in the Jalebi syrup because it might not stay coiled up.

I think I should send the sophomore in me back inside.

Of HBO’s ‘Silicon Valley and my own abortive idea

Watching HBO’s funny new series ‘Silicon Valley’ I occasionally kick myself for what could have been. It was in 2000-2001 that I proposed and even partially wrote the pilot for a TV series along similar lines as part of my now defunct media company Literate World’s slate.

I had called it ‘Silicone Valley’ because the founder nerd of a fictional startup by the same name had a fascination for women with enhanced boobs. The proposed series was set up as part of an incubating venture where nerds come to make their pitch to cut-throat venture capitalists. The premise was very funny and I was fairly certain it would be a highly watchable series.

The pilot episode made a reference to Silicon Valley entrepreneur Sabeer Bhatia because he was very high profile among the Indian techie community then in the aftermath of the 1999 acquisition of his creation Hotmail along with Jack Smith. I remember one of the lines in the pilot episode spoken by the protagonist of ‘Silicone Valley’, Sriram Venkatraghavan, truncated to Ven and fondly called Ven diagram by his fellow nerds. The line was a crack at Sabeer Bhatia.

“This is the only time when people would mention Sabeer Bhatia and hot male in the same sentence,” Ven was made to say by me. Ven would then irritate his fellow nerds by asking, “Get it? Hotmail and hot male…”

Written and directed by Mike Judge ‘Silicon Valley’ is an engaging watch because it gets the mood, jargon and humor of a startup fairly well. Having lived in Silicon Valley at the height of the tech boom and reported on it, not to mention having been a beneficiary of its culture of easy cash sloshing about, I identify with the series.

The two episodes that I have watched so far concern Richard (Thomas Middleditch), founder of a start-up called ‘Pied Piper’.  The theme of the episodes centers on what has long been considered—even from the time I lived there—the holy grail of Silicon Valley, compression algorithms. Put it simply compression algorithms are about compressing massive data without the result becoming lossy or losing its original quality. Efficiently compressed data is crucial because it allows for easier storage and faster transmission.

‘Silicon Valley’ is not laugh out loud funny but it has its moments. Humor is woven into a world that does not easily lend itself to it. After all, what jokes can you possibly write about compression algorithms? That is why my abortive idea had some cheap shots such as Sabeer Bhatia and hot male or the name itself ‘Silicone Valley.’ The only satisfaction I can draw from my failure to execute the idea is to tell myself lamely that I was ahead of my time. In reality, ideas are dime a dozen. It is carrying them out that matters.

‘The Accidental Prime Minister’, Part II

What exactly does the media adviser to the prime minister of India do? I do not mean a particular individual but any individual who is in that position.

As a professional articulator of the prime minister, one would expect to see the media adviser at least once a year on some television channel explaining important policy issues/decisions/changes. As far as I know, other than informally briefing a bunch of favored journalists or selectively leaking stories the media advisers have traditionally not done much.

Why can’t the prime minister’s office (PMO) institutionalize a system where the media adviser, who is in fact the press secretary, holds weekly briefings? It would be ideal if there are daily briefings along the lines of the White House press secretary but let’s begin with weekly briefings.

Perhaps the timing of my suggestion is all wrong considering that the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Narendra Modi is being projected as the likely next prime minister. Modi, a reputed control freak who is known to sulk and pout in the face of uncomfortable questions, may choose to do away with the position altogether. Except coming up with a grand unified theory Modi is capable of doing almost everything himself. He needs no advice from anyone, the least of all from a hack. All his advisers reside in his own head wearing the Modi mask. (Now that is one scary image).

The role of the media adviser has come to my mind in light of the current controversy over the tell-all book by Dr. Sanjaya Baru, a former media adviser to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. His book 'The Accidental Prime Minister: The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh' has been slammed by his successor Pankaj Pachauri as “fiction” that is “baseless and mischievous” as well as “colored views”. In particular, the PMO has been riled by Dr. Baru’s suggestion that important files from the PMO were reviewed by Congress Party president Sonia Gandhi. The controversy surrounds on whether in her capacity as the party president Gandhi systematically undermined Dr. Singh’s authority. In Dr. Baru’s telling,she did. In Pachauri’s rejoinder, that is all fiction. I am hard-pressed to decide whom to believe, although the benefit of the doubt should go to Dr. Baru.

It is not that inconceivable that important files were referred to Gandhi who had chosen to be in control of the political fallout of her party’s coalition government. It may not have been spelled out explicitly but it was clear to all concerned that while Dr. Singh would look at the administrative side of the government, Gandhi and her cohorts would look after the political side. There is nothing controversial in and of itself in this division since Dr. Singh was never particularly inclined toward the politics of his job. What is controversial, however, is the likelihood that Gandhi’s sway over decision-making might have gone to the extent of eroding the PMO’s authority. I do not have particular sympathy for Dr. Singh in this debate because from all appearances he chose to go along with this arrangement from the get-go.

Dr. Singh was 71 when he first became prime minister. He had been a full-grown adult for at least 50 years by that time, not to mention someone who had held decisive government positions. It is also an age by which most people would have long formed their core personality (I would put that age at 17 but that is a different point). He would have known that he was signing up for a role that demanded some measure of subservience to the political will of the Congress president. That he has continued in that position for a decade shows that he made his peace with it. With this as a backdrop, it would be misplacing one’s sympathy for Dr. Singh. On balance, the arrangement suited him as much as it suited Gandhi.

If he felt stifled by the split authority, he should have given Gandhi a clear ultimatum. For all you know, he probably did. However, that is neither here nor there because he chose to stay on in office despite all its pitfalls. In the final analysis, the controversy over the split authority is hardly relevant because both sides were equally complicit in it. Dr. Singh was not a guileless and unsuspecting victim. The fact is that he has gone on to become India’s third longest serving prime minister after Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi with some rather significant accomplishments to his name. Be content with those and live a happy retired life.

About President George W. Bush’s paintings

From one iffy painter to another, my unsolicited advice to former President George W. Bush is to persist in pursuit of painting. Not that your art will get better; it is just that people will get more tolerant or indifferent or resigned to it.

Bush does not need me to tell him that the reason why his art gets so much attention has almost nothing to do with his art and everything to do with who he is and has been. Looking at the former president’s portraits of world leaders, including India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, it is obvious to me that those roadside artists in Manhattan do a much greater job of portraiture sitting on the grimy sidewalks. They do not have the luxury of being displayed in a library that bears their own name. They just sell their works for 15 bucks apiece without serious art critics ever saying anything about them.

I have seen many of President Bush’s portraits. They are very graduate level quality of an aspiring painter passing out of a suburban art school by railway tracks. That is not necessarily a criticism but merely a summation of what I feel. It has been my enduring view of President Bush that he likes to play different people—once it was president and now, having played that successfully, it is painter. The sense one gets is that he is keen to play parts. I have seen photos of him looking like a painter with an apron. Not a lot of serious painters bother with an apron because the aim is not to shield oneself against the paints but to get immersed in them.

I am happy that post-presidency he has found a hobby that seems to make him happy. In terms of the quality of his portraits, they may or may not be fairly accurate representations of the people he has drawn. Are they at least evocative? I am not so sure. Manmohan Singh, for instance, looks like a sanguine version of himself. There is a clear likeness but there is no personality. That may have to do with Dr. Singh and not Bush’s talents as a painter.

President Bush has been a great admirer of Prime Minister Winston Churchill who was a fairly accomplished painter. Churchill’s works are more assured than Bush’s. In fact,the renowned painter Sir Oswald Birley was once quoted as saying, "If Churchill had given the time to art that he has given to politics, he would have been by all odds the world’s greatest painter." One would hesitate to say that about President Bush but one must applaud the effort. Churchill’s advice to aspiring painter was to be audacious. In painting anything at all Bush has certainly followed that advice rather well.

Speaking of audacity, mine has been chronicled in my posts frequently. The other day I shot myself completing a piece. Here is that piece with a link to the video on YouTube. I have for long considered the sight of several people reading newspapers, as they do in India, a rather charming one. It is a reassuring sight because people bother to read and stay informed. This particular work of mine was done on a Whole Foods brown bag opened up.

'The Accidental Prime Minister: The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh'

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s former media adviser Sanjaya Baru has set off a stink bomb in the middle of a political season that by its very nature must stink. As with all stenches, this one will soon dissipate as well.

His apparently tell-all book 'The Accidental Prime Minister: The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh' confirms the long-held suspicion in New Delhi that for the better part of his tenure he had been beholden to Congress Party president Sonia Gandhi personally. While Dr. Singh’s sense of obligation toward Gandhi comes across clearly, what comes across equally clearly from even the limited reading of the book’s excerpts in India Today magazine is Dr. Baru’s own sense of anguish at his mentor and former boss being railroaded by extraneous political forces.

Without going into the details of how I happened to have been privy to many of those same machinations that Dr. Baru writes about as having undermined the prime minister’s authority, I can tell you that this book ought to have been written, notwithstanding that it necessarily betrays many confidences. One significant and obvious confidence that Dr. Baru had to step all over was his own access to the behind-the-scenes goings on courtesy of Dr. Singh himself. It is hardly a surprise that a statement from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) is stinging in its denunciation of the former media adviser who also happens to be a journalist.

The PMO statement says, "It is an attempt to misuse a privileged position and access to high office to gain credibility and to apparently exploit it for commercial gain. The commentary smacks of fiction and colored views of a former adviser."

From the PMO’s vantage point that makes perfect sense because it could not have viewed it any other way in the current climate of recrimination. That said, it must be pointed out that all significant revelations throughout human history have been made because someone chose to “misuse a privileged position”. It is obvious to me that Dr. Baru made a genuine judgment call when he wrote the book that the public’s right to know facts about what happened during the last ten years of the Indian republic trumps any possibility of misusing a privileged position. Commercial gain is undeniably a part of the calculations made by the book’s publisher Penguin Books India but that motivation does not alter facts as presented by Dr. Baru. And what are some of those facts as evident in the excerpts?

I would not bore you with the specifics of what goes on India’s power politics but it comes through that Sonia Gandhi as Congress president was indeed hands on enough in major decision-making to be characterized as highly meddlesome as well the real power behind the PMO. There has been an invisible fence around Dr. Singh’s PMO which he could not possibly breach without consequences. More often than not the ear-piercing political frequency that he heard every time he approached the parameters of the fence ensured that he stayed within those bounds. I believe Dr. Baru when he says the predominant content of the book is a rather factual explanation of what was going on and which can act as a powerful defense of Dr. Singh.

It is true, as pointed out by Dr. Baru in his interview with Bhupendra Chaubey on IBN Live,  that the book has to be read in full in order to understand its overarching judgment. Instead—and that there is no surprise there either—selective portions that buttress political biases already harbored by the concerned players are being used by Dr. Singh’s political adversaries in the Bharatiya Janata Party who have long called him the weakest prime minister in India’s history.

Dr. Baru is right in saying that perhaps no other prime minister has been ridiculed to the extent Dr. Singh has been despite his many accomplishments during his first term. It is against this ridicule that Dr. Baru seems to have risen although the professed purpose of the book is to present a balanced picture of one of India’s three longest serving prime ministers.

This election also marks the end of one of the country’s most consequential—and that is not necessarily positive—public careers that Dr. Singh has had in various capacities, including as its finance minister and governor of the Reserve Bank of India. Even if his Congress Party manages to win/cobble together enough numbers in this election to return to power, Dr. Singh will not be prime minister. To that extent, Dr. Baru’s book is the first insider account of his tenure.

The India Today excerpts present a fairly positive image of the outgoing prime minister or, at the very least, that of a good man choosing to compromise or yield without really losing his own personal integrity. In that context, Dr. Baru uses a telling phrase to describe Dr. Singh’s conduct in separating his individual integrity, which is supposed to be stellar, from that of collective integrity. He describes it as “Active morality for himself, but passive morality for others”. This may sound convenient and expedient but when the stakes are as high as they are in the PMO, this negotiated morality and integrity is pretty much a requirement. Politics is the art of negotiated morality.

Dr. Baru is feeling the heat under his collar because he chose to write the book which his publisher rightly chose to release at this time. Exploiting the content and timing of any book are intrinsic to publishing. That by itself does not take away from its merit or enhance it. If I were Manmohan Singh, I would tell myself looking into my bathroom mirror (even if I do not have to shave) “I am 81-years-old. I must own it now.”

Javier Montesol: Very now, very evocative

Take any painting of Javier Montesol and you get the sense that you have caught urgent lines in the midst of forming an image. They seem incomplete and yet they are so tellingly evocative. I discovered Montesol this morning on—where else?—Google Art Project. I was looking for something very now and very urban and found it in Montesol’s prolific body of works.

Going through both the Google Art Project and Montesol’s website the most striking aspect of his works, apart from his obvious sense of proportions, is his brilliant use of colors. At first look, these may seem like an easy style to emulate. It is anything but. It is extremely hard. At least for me, at any rate.

As I browsed through Montesol’s paintings it also began to become obvious that he possesses some extraordinary technique in bringing together disparate colors, figures, shapes and proportions. Just to be able to control so many features and still being able to produce one cohesive image takes extraordinary talent.

I have chosen some random works here to illustrate Montesol’s modernity and a keen eye for urban images. In the 2012 painting right below titled ‘La mujer de rojo’ (The woman in red), take the woman in red out and the painting immediately loses its anchor. I have sliced out the detail of the woman to show you how even in that rush of lines, she looks captivating. Look at her gait. It makes her seem unattainable.I could be running the risk of suspending my critical faculties here but I find any and all work of Montesol captivating.

If I had even 10 percent of Montesol’s talent as a painter I would have quit my current profession.

La mujer de rojo, 2012, Montesol