Mayank Chhaya Daily

Smoke, chew tobacco, stink and die

On the World No Tobacco Day today, I would like to republish something I wrote on May 3 last year. Before I do that, a couple of observations about any habit that is injurious to health, especially anyone or any organization that opposes a bad habit or harmful habit by citing certain statistics. Since it is the World No Tobacco Day today, let me quote from what the World Health Organization (WHO) says about tobacco: “Tobacco kills nearly six million people each year, of which more than 600 000 are non-smokers dying from breathing second-hand smoke. For World No Tobacco Day 2014, we are calling on countries to raise taxes on tobacco.”

I am not here to dispute the obvious dangers of smoking and consuming tobacco. I have never smoked or consumed tobacco in my life. I have never tasted a drop of alcohol other than in cough syrups. So I hardly need that advice. However, I have a problem with the way these objections are constructed. When the WHO or any other institution says a particular habit kills so many people, they almost make it sound as if without that habit they would have lived forever. We all die. Only the nature of the cause of death changes. It is a matter of detail. It is not as if the six million, who die because of tobacco, would have been immortal otherwise. It is true that smokers do not lead a healthy life. Their lungs rattle when they breathe or cough. They look prematurely old. They look eternally fatigued. They have a peculiar odor about them. All of that makes for terrible aesthetics, not to mention terrible health.  That said, there is no denying the cool factor of the act of smoking. That’s what I wrote about in the piece below and tried to establish in the video above.

Of course, tobacco is death and avoid it at all costs. But then, so is life. I remain unresolved in so much as it means telling full-grown adults with a reasonably working brain what to do with their lives. Smoke or chew tobacco by all means but be prepared to stink and die earlier than you might. You can always make that choice. Now the piece:

I have never smoked although I have been irremediably attracted to the whole ritual of smoking.

When you strike a match its potassium chlorate and sulfur tip lights up as if rebelling against years of being kept unignited. Then you bring the flaming matchstick to the cigarette dangling from your mouth unsure whether it should stay wedged between your lips or yield to the gravitational pull and fall. It is that in-between stage of falling and not falling that accentuates the appeal.

Then you finally light the cigarette and take the first, long breath in. A second or so later smoke comes languorously out of your mouth and nose as if blessing the world with its fading existence. There is undeniable cool to the whole action if done seamlessly. It is the aftermath of smoking that is far from cool.

It is funny how for someone who has never smoked a cigarette I can perform a rather convincing act of a seasoned smoker. The amount of time I spend thinking about smoking is equally disturbing. I call it contemplative smoking.

For me, the ritual ends in a flourish as you flick half-smoked cigarette in the air using the index finger and thumb. The trajectory had to be perfect. Otherwise it dilutes the cool factor.

I have tried to analyzed this utterly useless fixation and come to the conclusion that it is the lure of the elemental that does it for me. The fire in the flame, the sulfurous odor of a burning match, the unpredictable movement of the smoke and finally the flicking in the air of the cigarette, together they all make it one of my favorite acts. It is weird I have never succumbed to the temptation. The closest I have come is what the video above shows.

There is a distinct difference in the body language of a male smoker and a female smoker. More often than not a male smoker smokes as if he is doing the cigarette a favor. He may look upset that the cigarette does not demonstrate sufficient gratitude at having been chosen to be burnt out of existence. In contrast, a female smoker mostly shows genuine enjoyment. There is a certain delicateness to the way a female smoker holds her cigarette. Even the cigarette looks eager to be trapped between those slightly parting luscious lips. As usual I am indulging in an overzealous deconstruction of an ordinary act. But you get the point, the point being that I like the whole visual of smoking.

“Spooky actions at a distance” are actually happening

Clock3 by Mayank Chhaya*

Trying to make sense out of quantum entanglement in the midst of a migraine attack is nearly lethal. However, it seems to me that the only way to understand quantum entanglement is via a migraine attack. Having lived with migraines of varying ferocity for almost my entire life, I can now conclude that they give you such dazzling clarity about concepts of physics as is not possible in a normal state.

I am thinking of quantum entanglement this morning because it is being reported that a team of physicists at the Netherlands’ Kavli Institute of Nanoscience has been successfully able to teleport information between two quantum bits separated by 3 meters. As I mentioned, I would not have been able to comprehend any of this in a normal state without a migraine attack. Since I am going through one right now I am able to make much better sense of this finding for myself than I normally would have. Think of migraine as a lens that sharpens the information that goes through it. I call it migraine lensing. Unfortunately, I don’t think I can explain to you what stands fully explained to me right now.

Teleportation is an idea familiar to us as part of ‘Star Trek’ folklore and other science fiction stories. What the Kavli scientists are reporting is not about teleporting actual people such as Captain James Tiberius Kirk or Mr. Spock (I am being ironic by calling them actual people). It is about teleporting information between two points, which would constitute the fundamentals of the much talked about quantum computing. From Isaac Newton’s precisely deterministic universe to Albert Einstein’s more subtle and nuanced universe to rather bizarrely unpredictable quantum universe there are several layers of the physics of our universe. Just as Newton might have found weird and bizarre Einstein’s assertion that there is no single universal clock or time or what is now here is something else a billion light years away, Einstein found the quantum world equally weird and bizarre. Responding to the idea of quantum mechanics he famously said,  "physics should represent a reality in time and space, free from spooky actions at a distance." The idea that two particles separated by a massive, unimaginable distance can affect each other or in a way are entangled as memorably described by Erwin Schrodinger, for want of a better expression, freaked Einstein out. You should bear in mind is that Einstein’s freaking out is not like an ordinary mortal’s freaking out. It is based on some profound objections. Unraveling Einstein’s freaking out can earn you a PhD in physics.

So far computing is in the realm of classical bits, meaning information getting transferred in the two values of 0 and 1. Quantum computing, in contrast, allows for information to be transferred in many different values through what is known as quantum bits or qubits. Quantum computing is supposed to be way more reliable than classical computing, the way it is done now.It is in this context that what the Kavli scientists are reporting is extraordinary. They say they have been able to teleport information absolutely accurately, meaning without losing any data. From the 3 meter transfer, they now propose to do it over a distance of over one kilometer and eventually over longer distances. This is their way of showing that quantum entanglement works, something that completely defies Einstein’s idea of what he called “spooky actions at a distance.”

The above description was written by me in a span of about ten minutes under the dazzling clarity created by my migraine attack. As it begins to wear off because of a pain killer and as I return to my normal state, that comprehension is beginning to fade. So I might as well end it here. If you do not understand what I have said here, well it is just too bad. Not everything is for everyone. Either that or go get a migraine.

* This fantastic digital painting by me can be bought at my site http://www.globalcontentnow.com/#!digital-art/c23v5

P.S.: The actual abstract from the team’s paper reads like this:”Realizing robust quantum information transfer between long-lived qubit registers is a key challenge for quantum information science and technology. Here, we demonstrate unconditional teleportation of arbitrary quantum states between diamond spin qubits separated by 3 m. We prepare the teleporter through photon-mediated heralded entanglement between two distant electron spins and subsequently encode the source qubit in a single nuclear spin. By realizing a fully deterministic Bell-state measurement combined with real-time feed-forward quantum teleportation is achieved upon each attempt with an average state fidelity exceeding the classical limit. These results establish diamond spin qubits as a prime candidate for the realization of quantum networks for quantum communication and network-based quantum computing.”

Skype is about to get way cooler with real-time translator

Skype is about to get way cooler with its real-time translator tool. Microsoft, which owns Skype, is expected to introduce a beta version of its translator tool before the end of this year. It is still early days for interpreters to feel threatened but if this app pans out the way Microsoft envisages, then pretty soon they will have to look for other skills. To be able to communicate with someone in your mother tongue or a language you are most comfortable has an extraordinary value in human discourse. With this app Microsoft could fundamentally transform the way the world communicates. Of course, the danger of losing the essence or nuance in translation is something they will have to ensure.

Speech recognition is a relatively new science but it has made considerable strides in recent years. If Skype translator app does indeed do what it promises to, then we are on the verge of a revolution. After buying Skype in 2011 for $8.5 billion this app is by far the biggest value addition to that rather expensive acquisition. Its potential is obvious but it is not yet clear how Microsoft proposes to monetize it. Given its track record, I am sure they will find a way to recoup the investment it has made on speech recognition, automatic translation and machine learning technologies for quite some time now.

Driving the new app, apart from Microsoft’s Indian-origin CEO Satya Nadella, is a fellow Indian-origin professional called Gurdeep Pall, who is the corporate vice president of Skype. During the Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, Nadella spoke about how the company has built a “deep neural net” in order to achieve a level of finesse not seen before. That sounds like sci-fi and some might even think it has the potential to facilitate technology gradually upending humans. Nadella spoke about “transfer learning” where while learning two languages how it becomes better at one and as it goes along learning more languages it improves its command over the languages learned before. In short every new language it learns, it also improves the ones before that. That can be either magical, as Nadella puts it, or scary as some others might think in the way HAL 9000 of ‘2001 A Space Odyssey’ became. Nadella says that transfer learning makes the app “brain-like.” There may be an element of hype there but even with that the potential is obvious.

There will be those who would paint apocalyptic visions of a combination of such intelligent apps taking over the world. It could well happen and if it does, well, so be it. Who said humans are guaranteed primacy on this planet in perpetuity? We are obviously the only species capable of making ourselves redundant and feel greatly excited about it.

Revisiting what I wrote ten years ago about India, China and Tibet

Ten years ago, The San Jose Mercury News asked me to do a piece on Tibet and its future, particularly in the light of a thaw between India and China under Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. It was during his June, 2003, visit that Vajpayee reiterated India’s recognition of the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) as a part of China. As a reciprocal gesture, China accepted the northeastern state of Sikkim as a part of India. As Vajpayee’s direct political inheritor, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will sooner rather than later face the task of updating his government’s policy towards China. While in 2004 China was already a major power on the world stage, it is now even more assertively so. Its GDP is four times that of India, it spends four times more on its defense than India does on its and it is the world’s second largest economy behind the United States set to become the world’s largest. The Dalai Lama was 68 in 2004 (at the time of my writing) and is now 78. He turns 79 on July 6. He has since given up all his formal political powers. Those are the facts. I republish this rather long piece because many of the scenarios as they relate to Tibet are either similar or the same.

Quest Dims for Independent Tibet
(by Mayank Chhaya | The Mercury News | March 07, 2004)

Four and a half decades after he was forced to flee his homeland in the face of annexation by China, the Dalai Lama is as distant now from an independent Tibet as he was then.

Now 68, the spiritual and political leader has spent the past 15 years touring the Western world to campaign for Tibet's independence through peaceful means. He has been courted by powerful world leaders and feted by Hollywood celebrities. He has drawn in a legion of new followers through his spiritual teachings and bestselling books like "The Art of Happiness." He has even won a Nobel Peace Prize.

Yet Tibet has moved no closer to independence — and it appears to be losing ground in its struggle.

The recent thaw in traditionally frosty relations between China and India — where the Dalai Lama has lived since 1959 — spells trouble for the future of Tibet. As the two Asian giants warm up to each other, it is more likely that the issue of Tibet will recede further into the background. Coupled with China's continued efforts to remake Tibet in its own image, prospects for independence appear dim.

Known as the "rooftop of the world" for its awesome mountains and breathtaking valleys, Tibet for centuries had been an independent state that enjoyed an equal relationship with China. But in 1950, shortly after the rise of communist China, the Chinese army invaded Tibet.

The following year, Tibet signed an agreement for nominal autonomy — for all practical purposes bringing the region under Beijing's control. In the ensuing years, China clamped down further on Tibet. In 1959, Tibetans staged a revolt but were crushed by the Chinese army. In the aftermath, the Dalai Lama fled to India — along with 80,000 Tibetans. They were granted political asylum, and it was there, in Dharamsala, that the Dalai Lama helped found the Tibetan government in exile.

Beacon for Peace: During his life in exile, the Dalai Lama has grown from a young monk in his 20s into one of the world's most compelling voices for peace. The tradition of the Dalai Lama as the spiritual and temporal leader of Tibet goes back centuries. Followers believe there is one Dalai Lama who is reincarnated; when a Dalai Lama dies, monks set out to find his successor. India has been the most ardent supporter of the current Dalai Lama, allowing him to form the government in exile on its soil.

Nevertheless, India has also had to balance its own economic, territorial and military interests in the face of a powerful Asian neighbor separated by Tibet. India's bitter memories of a humiliating defeat by China in 1962 have long lost their intensity. And the two countries have lately attempted to put their relations on an even keel, driven mainly by economics. As the world's most populous countries, they recognize the importance of maintaining peace as they seek to be the pre-eminent powers in Asia.

A series of recent events, starting with the Indian prime minister's visit to China in June (2003), may jeopardize Tibet's struggle for independence. During Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's visit, India reiterated its recognition of the Tibetan Autonomous Region as a part of the People's Republic of China. On its own, that recognition would not have been considered significant. But China reciprocated by accepting the northeastern region of Sikkim as a part of India, though Sikkim has been a part of India since 1975.

Bargaining Chip: As long as India and China held to their stubborn positions on territorial disputes along their long shared border, there was a chance that New Delhi could use the Dalai Lama as leverage simply because of his presence there. Now that the two adversaries have begun to talk about disputed territories of about 12,700 square miles along India's northwestern border with China, chances are the Dalai Lama's presence would no longer be seen as a bargaining chip.

In another sign of cooperation, India and China concluded their first joint military naval exercises in November. This was followed by the first-ever visit of a high-level Indian army delegation to Tibet. The symbolic visit signaled that both sides are willing to let bygones be bygones.

Meanwhile, China has fashioned the region in its own image, including altering Tibet's demographics by moving Han Chinese people into Tibet. According to estimates, Tibet now is home to about 6 million indigenous Tibetans and 7 million Han Chinese.

Beijing is also strengthening its hold over Tibet through economic activities. An example is the construction of a railroad linking mainland China and the Tibetan capital of Lhasa, which is bound to make it easier to bring in military and civilians. Tibet constitutes one-quarter of China's territory and is rich in minerals, making it tough for Beijing to let go.

Given these geopolitical forces, the only viable option Tibetans have is precisely defined autonomy within China, ensuring a self-rule and unambiguously stating what areas of government the Tibetans would control. Contentious areas would involve nearly every major issue, from judicial and legislative powers to cultural and religious affairs.

Experts are looking at several models of autonomy, including the "one country, two systems" model followed by China in Hong Kong. China's quest for economic growth and geopolitical clout will compel it to contain, if not eliminate, conflicts within its territory. Tibet is potentially the most troublesome because of the Dalai Lama's powerful advocacy of the right to self-rule.

The Dalai Lama has consistently said that "any relationship between Tibet and China will have to be based on the principle of equality, respect, trust and mutual benefit."

"It will also have to be based on the principle which the wise rulers of Tibet and China laid down in a treaty in 823 AD," said the Dalai Lama in an interview. "This treaty still remains carved on the pillar that stands in front of Jokhang," Tibet's holiest shrine. The treaty reads: "Tibetans will live happily in the great land of Tibet, and the Chinese will live happily in the great land of China."

The Middle Path: During his early years in exile, the Dalai Lama favored independence. But in the past 15 years, he has come to recognize its impracticability. He knows his options are limited because of China's stranglehold over Tibetan affairs, and the world's waning attention. Recently, he has been advocating the middle-path philosophy. While this would guarantee that Tibet would retain its distinct political, social, cultural, religious, economic and linguistic identity, it also means abandoning the idea of complete independence from China.

As time goes by, the Buddhist master's negotiating space is getting narrower. Chinese and Tibetan scholars have even suggested that Beijing may be waging a war of attrition against the Dalai Lama, waiting for his demise. The thinking behind this cynical strategy is that the next young boy to be named Dalai Lama would naturally take a long time to rise to a position of influence.

Already, though, there are signs of defiance among young Tibetan exiles in India who are openly advocating that Tibet secede from China rather than settle for autonomy. The Tibetan Youth Congress, which claims 20,000 members worldwide, has said it does not support the Dalai Lama's middle-path philosophy.

But with no solution in sight, the Dalai Lama's only choice is to craft a compromise for autonomy, however unpopular with the younger generation of Tibetans.

Notes from an inconsequential Twitterer

With the number of my Twitter followers rising to a staggering 106 in barely five years, I feel the high burden of expectations that is not different from what India’s new Prime Minister Narendra Modi must feel. I half expect Twitter co-founder Biz Stone to reach out and request me if I could possibly go any slower. I run the risk of bringing Twitter down because the servers cannot handle what may be the slowest rate of growth in its history.

My Twitter handle #mcsix may only partly explain such an abysmally low number. My full name has at least a slightly better name recognition online. However, the bigger issue is my inconsequentiality as a Twitterer considering that I am no longer in the thick of things, anything really.

People build up a Twitter following by various means but mainly by being witness to things that other people are generally interested in. It is also an incestuous world where Twitter users proliferate their followers by inbreeding. Living where I live, I am not witness to much more than my own fading hubris as a journalist who for the better part of the last 33 years was in the midst of events that captured the popular imagination. Been there-done that is not the right combustible material to ignite Twitter passion.

It says something about me that most of my followers have many more followers themselves than I do. Some of my followers follow me purely out of humanitarian concern. Those who are well plugged into twitterverse tell me that I just do not tweet even nearly enough. 2685 tweets in five years (2686 if you count once this post gets on) is not even good enough for me to keep my account alive, let alone flourish. A couple of friends suggested that I try creating a new account in my own full name because it is fairly widely propagated in the Internet search.

I am not entirely sure if it serves any purpose to have a large number followers other than a minor and transient feeling of importance. Not being a celebrity it would be foolish to tweet just about anything. In a sense, my Twitter following mirrors the readership of this blog. After nearly seven years and 2177 posts (including this one) it is less than a minor presence. Its robust mix of themes and positions well ahead of the curve on most issues notwithstanding, it just does not enjoy the sort of traction it probably should.

It is a good thing that I write purely out of self-centeredness. Otherwise, it has no purpose whatsoever.

Bile that rises up esophagus and causes a burning streak

Arundhati Roy’s fulminations are like the bile that rises up one’s esophagus causing a burning streak along the passage after eating a particularly rich meal. The sour lava that eructs from the stomach comes as a reminder that the meal may have been greatly satisfying but the aftermath is grossly uncomfortable.

In describing India’s latest election as throwing up a “democratically elected totalitarian” government in an interview with Tahir Mehdi of the Dawn newspaper , Roy yet again demonstrates her flair for creating powerfully contrarian word pictures. However, that is all those are—contrarian word pictures. In Arundhati Roy’s world there is nothing to celebrate in life. It is a post-apocalyptic hellscape where joy has to be garroted to death.

I have this image of Roy sitting by a massive tin tub filled up diarrheal water and stacks of blankets. Every time something happens that the society at large feels optimistic about she dunks a blanket in the fecal water and throws it at the world. “Before you feel joyous for any reason at all, take this you suckers,” is what she seems to be saying.

I have tried pretty hard to defend her in my own distilled little ways because I think she does highlight all the right reasons to be pessimistic about. Even for me though a stage has come when I can no longer tolerantly look at her default position of the world spiraling toward an irredeemable and irremediable doom. In a rather efficient and brutal takedown, Omar Ali, a Pakistani-American physician, in a blog on the Outlook magazine’s website describes Roy and others like her, including writer Pankaj Mishra, in these terms: “They are proudly progressive, but they also cringe at the notion of “progress”. They are among the world’s biggest users of modern technology, but also among its most vocal (and scientifically clueless) critics. Picking up that the global environment is under threat (a very modern scientific notion if there ever was one), they have also added some ritualistic sound bites about modernity and its destruction of our beloved planet (with poor people as the heroes who are bravely standing up for the planet). All of this is partly true (everything they say is partly true, that is part of the problem) but as usual their condemnations are data free and falsification-proof. They are also incapable of suggesting any solution other than slogans and hot air.”

Roy tells Mehdi how India’s development model has a genocidal core to it and asks, “How have the other ‘developed’ countries progressed? Through wars and by colonising and usurping the resources of other countries and societies. India has no option but to colonise itself.”

The problem is Roy has been exceptionally incisive in identifying the essential cruelty of a country in development but has absolutely nothing to offer by way of implementable and scalable solutions. If her prescription to the grand lethal malaise is that India and countries around the world should altogether cease any form of development that inconveniences even a single human being—a hugely noble aspiration, by the way—then she should say so. What is forgotten in this debate is that the human race has had to make up economic models ever since it became organized into large societies. It is one massive trial and error that continues till today. Progress is always at the cost of someone, somewhere who got oppressed often without realizing it. It is tragic but that is the way it is. If Roy wants to change that order, then she should take the plunge in that very order and dismantle it from inside.  I have zero moral right to advise her or anyone else for that matter because my life has been nothing but a selfish survival gig. However, even someone like me clearly sees the limit of forever protesting anything and everything. Derision and cynicism have their value but a time must come when one needs to get more constructive.

One significant part of the reason why voices like Roy’s rile a vast section of Indian society is because they are eternally bereft of joy and optimism. Her idea that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ascension has been achieved via some fiendish corporate-political skullduggery may or may not have merit but to view everything in that light serves no real purpose other than generating some quotes. “What he [Modi] will be called upon to do is not to attack Muslims, it will be to sort out what is going on in the forests, to sweep out the resistance and hand over land to the mining and infrastructure corporations,” she has been quoted as saying by the Dawn. “The contracts are all signed and the companies have been waiting for years. He has been chosen as the man who does not blink in the face of bloodshed, not just Muslim bloodshed but any bloodshed.”

Precisely because India is a democracy, however much flawed it may be, it is essential that people like Roy test their case against the popular will. Of course, it is her right to be forever a brutal contrarian. Her vision of an inherently just and compassionate society is laudable but can we now please have a way to get there?

Yellow Warbler in my window

Yellow Warbler (By Mdf (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons)

For the past few days a Yellow Warbler has been fluttering in front of my full glass window and frequently pecking it. My knowledge of different bird varieties is non-existent. Other than knowing that they are birds, I know nothing about them. So it took me some quick research to find out which particular bird has been striking against the window and why. This is where the near magical power of the Internet comes in.

I went online this morning to find out the kind of birds that are seen in the Chicago area this time of year. The Chicago Botanic Garden website has a specific list of migrating birds that show up not just around this time generally but specifically in the month of May. The science of ornithology is remarkably accurate and the only person I know among my friends who breaks into childlike enthusiasm about it is Yashesh Chhaya. I am sure he would have told me instantly which bird is fluttering in front of my window. It was too early to wake him up in time for this post. Coming back to the list on the Chicago Botanic Garden website, I found several birds. I had a hunch that this was a warbler, or a songbird, of some kind. So I copy-pasted Yellow Warbler in the Google Search. It instantly showed several images. I knew that was the bird. This is ornithology on the cheap.

It took me some reading to find out that perhaps the reason why they flutter in front of the glass windows and peck is because they see their own reflection and consider them to be a rival. After a long winter a rival is the last thing they want while foraging. I am hard-pressed to understand the rival part because that is the only bird I see in my vicinity. (The picture above is not the Yellow Warbler in my glass window but a generic shot. The bird that I am writing about is not so strikingly yellow).

There is so much urgency in the way the lovely bird flutters and pecks that one gets the sense it must really not like rivals. The ritual goes on for less than a minute. It happens in the morning and evening. At some level you have to be rather charmingly silly to be threatened your own reflection. But then there is a reason why the expression birdbrain exists. I would much rather be a birdbrain and look so pretty than have a big brain and bring so much ugliness to the world.

Unnecessary attempt to understand Narendra Modi through his Gujarati roots

With the rise of Narendra Modi, a Gujarati, the Outlook magazine has done a special issue about Gujarat in its efforts to understand what lies behind the fluffed up Dhokla. The tagline that the magazine uses is ‘Inside the Gujarati Mind’, which, I am happy to report, is not as empty as a finely fermented cake of Dhokla might suggest.

It is futile to look for one defining characteristic of a people. However, if one must, then I would say it is the Gujarati presumption that the world is Gujarati until proven otherwise. Indians generally are comfortable in their skin but among them the Gujaratis are infuriatingly so. The average Gujarati has that self-assurance that eventually the world will bend to their predilections. Irrespective of the cause they espouse, there is an unshakable belief that the others will eventually see its merit. That has been the Gujarati way. That significantly explains Modi’s success. I do not have to agree with what he stands for at all to recognize that he stands for it with such single-mindedness. Gandhi had that single-mindedness as did Sardar Patel or Mohammad Ali Jinnah or Vikram Sarabhai or Dhirubhai Ambani or any number of Gujaratis who have left a significant mark on India’s history. It is the quality of single-mindedness that I am talking about and not the quality of the cause its possessors have pushed. That is a separate debate.

Indians generally tend to be self-reliant but among them the Gujaratis are perhaps the most assertively so. They have never been known to wait for state intervention in any walk of life. Rarely have I found a helpless Gujarati in the face of hardship, be it financial, emotional, political, cultural or natural. DIY (Do it yourself) is in the Gujarati DNA.

One always runs the risk of overstating attributes of a community while looking at them through the prism of one of its members’ epic success. Modi’s rise may not be the best time to evaluate the Gujarati strengths and weaknesses because it (the rise) will necessarily color and accentuate that judgment. That said, there are distinguishing qualities to all communities and the Gujaratis are no exceptions. I do not remember the media trying to get a handle on the past prime ministers by putting them in the larger cultural and communal context of the region they come from. It is an interesting way to understand a public figure who goes on to capture or compel the national imagination the way Modi has obviously done.

Yet another so-called Gujarati trait that will be on display under the Modi dispensation is efficient pragmatism. There is an innate aversion to postpone tasks. “Patao”, meaning finish it or get it done or wrap it up, is one of the most frequently used words in Gujarati. As a rule, perfect is not allowed to be the enemy of good. It is that attitude that explains why Modi wants to get on with the task of engaging Pakistan on day one of his administration.

While the invitations to heads of the eight South Asian states to attend his inauguration on May 26 are in keeping with his rather imaginative way of doing things, the one to Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is also in keeping with the attitude of not postponing tasks. Reports say that Modi and Sharif will have a bilateral meeting on May 27, Day One of his tenure. This is unprecedented in India’s history, particularly as it relates to Pakistan. No Indian prime minister before Modi has jumped into the thick of things with Pakistan with such urgency. Of curse, the outcome of such an engagement is a matter for a different discussion but in so much as it underscores a narrow cultural trait, I think it speaks of the very Gujarati attitude to get it done. (I would not go into how the same Modi and his party would have reacted with derisive rejection had a Congress Party prime minister done the same thing).

I have said it for a long time—and some of my friends think controversially so—that nuance is not a strong point in my home state. In December, 2012 when Modi won his third state elections I had said this, “Nuance is sold by the kilo across my home state. In Ahmedabad, its biggest city where I was born and raised, if you buy a kilo of nuance you get two kilos free. Sometimes driving past a fafda-jalebi shop you may see a sign that says, ‘Nuance is bad for your health.’ My point is, as it has always been, mercantile community anywhere does not go for nuance, especially the one in Gujarat where its cultural roots are mercantile.”

As I conclude this brief insight into the Gujarati mind to coincide with Modi’s ascension, I might as well quote a popular Gujarati saying, “Kharab lagey to bey rotli vadhare khai lejo. (Eat some more if what I say offends you).”

Neelesh Misra and his rural reporting love affair now on TV

For a country with close to 600,000 villages where nearly 850 million people live, India is not just underserved but, in my judgment, criminally underserved by serious rural journalism. Villages are treated with such flagrant apathy by the media that they might as well not exist.

That is about to change with dear friend, fellow journalist and fantasy chaser Neelesh Misra and his terrific team of young journalists set to launch what could well be the country’s first substantial and substantive rural news and information show. Neelesh, who has pulled off a remarkable feat in starting and successfully running a solid rural newspaper Gaon Connection, is launching a sort of TV version of that. The show goes on air on June 9 on India’s public broadcaster Doordarshan.

I am glad that it is being carried on Doordarshan because, although and perhaps because it is a state broadcaster, it can afford airtime for a show like this. Other private 24/7 news channels, where gladiators masquerade as anchors in suits, will carry a show like this only if it means guaranteed commercial viability. While that is very much a consideration for Neelesh’s professionally produced show, it is certainly not the driving force. The show will be hosted by him drawing on his immense popularity as a radio narrator of great merit. It will be broadcast on Monday and Tuesday at 8 p.m., which is primetime.

I have a miniscule role in the show as the first Indian journalist based in America who will report exclusively for a rural show. The broadcast will be in Hindi. While I consider myself an effective writer and speaker of the language, I have never done television in Hindi. There could be a learning curve because I find myself lapsing into Urdu fairly frequently because that is the language I have been most drawn to since my childhood. Also, I will have to retune my rhythm while speaking the language for a TV show.

It is a show I look forward to simply because I know that Neelesh and his team have done a stellar job with the weekly newspaper Gaon Connection, now a little over one-year-old. I use my blog to reach out to whatever thin readership I enjoy across the world to not just try and watch it but find ways to financially support it.

Of coercive secularism and Narendra Modi

Apart from yours truly, if there is another observer that I trust to keep track of India’s socio-political winds it is the eminent social scientist and commentator Shiv Visvanathan. The world has generally stood utterly revealed and demystified in front of me for as long as I remember but occasionally one yearns for a voice other than one’s own. On such occasions, I check out Visvanathan, an unabashed liberal.

Notwithstanding his passion to inject scholarship into undeserving realms, Visvanathan generally offers perspectives which are never less than compelling. In the clearest indication yet that the rise of Narendra Modi, a braggadocian politician of uncomfortably high self-assurance, is causing a significant shift in the way the Indian liberal elite has begun to reassess its own certitudes Visvanathan has written an excellent piece in The Hindu newspaper. The headline itself is meant to underline that shift. It says,  “How Modi defeated liberals like me”.  If I considered myself a genuine member of the human species,  I too may have been part of that liberal elite. However, I have never considered myself to be part of the human species but a detached outsider to the amusing spectacle.

The gist of Visvanathan’s article is that liberal secularism has become so coercive in India that a vast majority of Indians who practice Hinduism as a way of life in all its glorious everydayness feel pushed around, oppressed and guilty. (This is my interpretation of what he is saying). On a side note, it is ironic that a man whose name contains not one but two names of the same Hindu god—Shiv and Visvanathan—has often been the bête noire of  those everyday Hindus numbering hundreds of millions and those who gave Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party its biggest ever victory.

This is how Visvanathan describes it: “The Left intellectuals and their liberal siblings behaved as a club, snobbish about secularism, treating religion not as a way of life but as a superstition. It was this same group that tried to inject the idea of the scientific temper into the constitutions as if it would create immunity against religious fears and superstitions. By overemphasising secularism, they created an empty domain, a coercive milieu where ordinary people practising religion were seen as lesser orders of being.”

It was this vast section of India that Modi and his team tapped into to win.

It is not my case that within days of rising Modi has begun to convert the unconvertible. But there is certainly a new wish to look at Modi and his kind afresh, without the liberal/secular blinders. I am not saying I necessarily agree or disagree with this approach. I am merely reporting what seems to be going on in the immediate aftermath of India’s most reviled political figure rising to become prime minister.It is precisely the kind of honest self-analysis that Visvanathan engages in in this piece that India needs. He puts it memorably by saying, “He (Modi) showed that liberal secularism had become an Orwellian club where some prejudices were more equal than others. As the catchment area of the sullen, the coerced, and the repressed became huge, he had a middle class ready to battle the snobbery of the second rate Nehruvian elite.”

I think the endeavor to freshly look at the electorally reinforced political ideology represented by Modi comes with its attendant challenges. The enthusiasm to reverse liberal prejudices—which sounds like an oxymoron—could create its own set of problems, one of which could be to disregard some of the more insidious aspects of the new agenda carried by the influential outliers around this new force. Going by the reader comments below Visvanathan's piece—reader comments as a norm tend to be devastatingly illiterate and half-baked—it seems that the readers are happy that finally sense has dawned on the “left-liberal” writer. I see Visvanathan’s piece as a fine example of how a truly liberal and liberated mind will have no problem questioning its own deeply considered views from time to time. He is accurate in saying that Narendra Modi tapped into the unease caused among everyday Hindus by coercive secularism. I wonder though whether a comparable observer from the other side of the divide would offer an equally honest self-assessment as Visvanathan. I hope someone does.