Mayank Chhaya Daily

My Leh Holiday and Princess Anne

Every so often, I watch 'Roman Holiday' in the hope that some of Joe Bradley's luck might rub off on me. Not being even remotely romantic, I watch it for the possibility that in the intervening decades the film may magically have a different ending where Bradley (Gregory Peck) does choose to publish his exclusive story about Princess Ann (Audrey Hepburn). That's how little a romantic and so much a journalist I am. 

I watched movie again yesterday, perhaps my 600th time, give or take 550. To commemorate that viewing, let me republish a post I wrote on June 23, 2015. It involved me, a wire correspondent, and a Princess Anne. Sort of. Here it is:

June 23, 2015

As a perpetually penurious print journalist (Brilliant alliteration) the 1953 film ‘Roman Holiday’ is the ultimate press romcom. Having watched it more number of times than I care to remember or count over the past 35 years, I am yet to find any parallels in my own professional life. There is the penury, of course. That’s there. Other than that there has been no Peckian suave or Hepburnian elegance. I did in fact work once for a wire service better known as IANS like Joe Bradley’s American News Service (ANS). ‘I’ was missing from ANS in the movie.

I began watching the movie again last night in the hope that the plot might have changed on its own in the past 62 years. I have often wondered about what if movies were organic in the sense that over a period of time they changed their plots on their own, evolved into something that their makers did not intend. What if they were intelligent enough to change their storylines from time to time? That is a separate subject for some other time.

There has been only one assignment in my hard news career spanning over 33 years which had me follow a princess. It was Princess Anne, the only daughter of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip and sister of Prince Charles. I use these useless honorifics purely as identifiers. She was visiting Leh in Ladakh region of India in the late 1980s  (I think it was 1989) as patron of the Save the Children Charity. I was reporting her visit for IANS. Princess Anne was no Princess Ann of ‘Roman Holiday’ and I was no Joe Bradley. She did not have the Hepburnian elegance, nor I the Peckian suave.

It strikes me even as I write this that I too had my Princess Anne moments minus the subtle romance or even any access whatsoever. The setting was Leh which is at the altitude of 3524 meters or 11,562 feet. One feels breathless at that height not because of any feminine beauty in front of you but because of the thin air. Anne was not a reluctant princess like Hepburn’s Ann and seemed to enjoy the life she was born into. Royal reporters and photographers, who accompanied her from London, took down every detail of her royal paraphernalia including her hats and luggage. She looked propah at all times. Her smile was finely rehearsed and deportment impeccable. She looked like someone accustomed to deference from the world for no apparent reason.

Princess Anne (Left next to the board) in Leh, Ladakh, India. The year, I think was 1989. (Photo: MC)

The thing with the movies about journalists and newspapers is that for those of us living that life for a living the plot never quite unfolds the way it does on the big screen. For Anne it was a sort of holiday and for me an assignment. Unlike Bradley I was not likely to miss any event because I was in a real life situation with the prospects of being fired for missing a story being very real. For Gregory Peck/Joe Bradley it was just a movie assignment. Anne did not run away from the palace to experience a life free of regimental royal encumbrances. And I certainly did not promise my wire service any exclusives. There was none to be had other than talking about how charming her hat boxes were.

I wrote several inconsequential stories about the visit during which she did not hold forth on the future of Europe or the world because she had no authority to. We did not have ice cream together. She was blissfully unaware of my presence. For the record, I was too preoccupied with the awe-inspiring beauty of Leh to really notice much of her either. That’s how I spent my Leh Holiday.

Chambal on plywood coming up

Defying my early arthritic knees, inherited from my late mother Snehlata, this morning I embarked on the biggest painting of my career so far. I found a trashed piece of plywood, 4 ft x 4 ft, and felt compelled to go at it. The trigger was my pastel and acrylic on paper depicting a scene from the ravines of Chambal in Madhya Pradesh, India. I have never been there but the visual formed in my mind while watching the trailer of director Abhishek Chaubey’s film about bandits ‘Sonchiriya’. My painting bears no resemblance to what I saw but the trailer was certainly a visual trigger.

The biggest challenge of graduating from small canvases and sketchpads turned out to be precisely what I had anticipated. Scaling was not a problem at all. Brushwork was not a problem at all. It was the frequent stretching and bending of my knees. Quite apart from exposing my lack of fitness, it also exposed hereditary shortcomings, presuming arthritis is hereditary. Speed has never been a problem for me—either while writing or painting. The bulk of the plywood painting is finished with some final touches to be added, including some human figures.

In a sense, I felt today that I perhaps have some skills as a prospective painter. I will upload the final piece in these columns tomorrow but for now, here is what I have finished so far.

My knees are screaming though.

Some observations about the grotesque Pulwama attack

It is does not take any significant insight to say that the staggering Pulwama attack had to have been a result of meticulous and detailed planning at least weeks in the making. It brought together so many varied pieces that the grotesquely emblematic presence of the 22-year-old suicide bomber Adil Ahmad Dar alias Adil Ahmad Gaadi Takranewala alias Waqas Commando is just a small aspect of it. Sure, he was crucial in so much as it came to the last mile execution of ramming his improvised explosives-filled vehicle. However, it was what it must have taken in the run-up to the ghastly attack that ought to worry the Indian authorities.

On January 14, 78 military vehicles formed a convoy transporting 2500 personnel of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) along the Jammu Srinagar National Highway.  Over the past three decades since a violent separatist insurgency gained momentum in the Kashmir Valley in 1989, the CRPF has become a well-oiled machine specializing in the first line of defense against a relentless adversary that has operated with the unabashed support of the various arms of the Pakistani intelligence-jihadi complex.

The Pulwama attack that killed 42 CRPF personnel, the worst in the last three decades, was claimed by the Pakistan-based terrorist outfit Jaish-e-Mohammed (JEM). Hence, the clear assertion that some elements of the Pakistani intelligence-jihadi complex had to have played a decisive role in the planning of the operation. After all, it could not be that Dar was just out driving for fun along the highway that afternoon in his SUV packed with improvised explosive device (IED) in the off chance that he might run into a massive paramilitary convoy.

Everything about his presence was calibrated on the basis of very sophisticated intelligence gathering as well as very efficient IED making. No one should be surprised if right up until the time his vehicle rammed into two paramilitary vehicles and the IED exploded he was being monitored by a group of his handlers. I feel ridiculous stating the obvious but an operation like this cannot be a spur-of-the-moment affair. Like I said, it brought so many disparate pieces together, right from the very specific intelligence about the vehicle movement on the most guarded highway in Kashmir, the time of its passage, the number of vehicles in the convoy, the point from where to strike and, of course, a brainwashed misanthrope in the form of Dar.

Having reported the Kashmir insurgency for nearly a decade since its inception, I have had many opportunities to interact with young men of Dar’s persuasion. Of course, since my years of reporting from there, there has been discernible mutation in the kind of insurgents and their brazenness. However, the fundamental political and cultural disaffections, which are often cited as the cause behind this deeply unnerving campaign, have not changed. Dar’s video saying he was on his way to heaven is a testament to how this macabre lunacy is sold to impressionable but utterly complicit young men like him. Analyzing the root causes of the misanthropic disgust among young Kashmiris is a very detailed and, I am afraid, eventually futile exercise that I am deliberately avoiding in this post.

It is clear that the attack is a direct result of a mortifying intelligence failure in a state which has generally perfected intelligence gathering to a remarkable degree. So many attacks have been thwarted because the security establishment in the valley has become so efficient at gathering intelligence and acting upon it. It is for that reason that I am concerned about this particular failure. There are reports in the Indian media that possibilities of an attack like this one along the national highway were clearly expressed by intelligence agencies. It will be a matter of investigation why, if it true, the intelligence was not acted upon. It is conceivable that in a region which has been in a state of bloody ferment for so long that it has caused a measure of fatigue even among the security forces. I am not sure if we will ever know clearly what series of failures led to this massacre.

On a separate but related note, I must bring to your notice a nearly decade-old action by the US Department of Treasury. On November 4, 2010, the Treasury targeted the financial and support networks of Pakistan-based terrorist organizations Lashkar-e Tayyiba (LET) and Jaish-e Mohammed (JEM). An official release then said, “Treasury took action against Azam Cheema, who helped train operatives for the November 2008 Mumbai attacks and was the "mastermind" behind the July 2006 Mumbai train bombings carried out by LET, for acting for or on behalf of LET. Treasury also acted against Hafiz Abdul Rahman Makki, head of LET's political affairs department, for acting for or on behalf of LET. Al Rehmat Trust, an operational front for JEM was designated for providing support to and for acting for or on behalf of JEM, and Mohammed Masood Azhar Alvi, JEM's founder and leader, was also designated today for acting for on behalf of JEM.”

The press announcement also quoted Stuart Levey, Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, as saying, "LET and JEM have proven both their willingness and ability to execute attacks against innocent civilians. Today's action – including the designation of Azam Cheema, one of LET's leading commanders who was involved in the 2008 and 2006 Mumbai attacks – is an important step in incapacitating the operational and financial networks of these deadly organizations.”

Nearly a decade later, the very JEM appears to be far from incapacitated. Masood Azhar operates from Pakistan unencumbered despite his organization having been designated a terrorist group by the United Nations. Azhar has a long history of very violent entanglement with Kashmir. He was arrested by the Indian authorities in Kashmir in 1994. Nearly five years later, in 1999, an Indian Airlines flight was hijacked while on its way from Kathmandu to New Delhi and forcibly taken to Kandahar, Afghanistan. The hijackers demanded the release of three men, one of which was Azhar, in exchange for freeing the passengers.

Since that release, Azhar has continued with his violent ways under a suspected patronage of the Pakistani intelligence.

A decade is a long time out of one’s career to have spent on a conflict as I have on Kashmir. I was not optimistic about its peaceful resolution then. I am even less so now. I am not even sure that there is a resolution. At best, there could be containment and that is depressing thought.

On a personal note, I avoid expressing sorrowful sentiments in the aftermath of a staggering attack like this one for one simple reason. I feel selfish in that I feel as if I am merely assuaging my disgust and anger and not in any way helping the families of those who died. However, I did feel prompted to make a painting accompanied with this post. It was almost instantaneous on first hearing the news of the attack. That is my way to express solidarity.

It is not my station to prescribe what the Indian government should do in response. I am sure there will be a retaliation that is both powerful and politically expedient in light of the upcoming parliamentary elections in India. 

To read poetry is to second-guess the poet

To read poetry is to second-guess the poet. This is particularly true of great poets.

Speaking of great poets, Ghalib, whose 150^th death anniversary happens to be today. He died on February 15, 1869. Mirza Asadullah Baig Khan aka Ghalib was born on 27 December 1797.

Last year on this day, I wrote, “In some sense, Mirza Ghalib is to poetry what Albert Einstein is to physics. People have a clear sense of their genius but only rather amorphous comprehension of it. There are, of course, millions in India and around the world who may be able to recite a verse or two or a dozen from Ghalib’s astonishing oeuvre.”

Not that there is a consequential difference between the 149^th anniversary and the 150^th one but in so much as people gravitate towards things sesquicentennial it is as good a time as any to commemorate it. The only verses of Ghalib that I can recite from memory are the following two. It is no coincidence that while one captures the great poet-philosopher’s epic intellectual epic conceit, the other a near Vedantic view of existence.

बाज़ीचा-ए-अतफ़ाल है दुनिया मेरे आगे

होता है शबो-रोज़ तमाशा मेरे आगे

Baazicha-e-atafal hai duniya mere aagey

Hota hai shabo-roz tamasha mere aagey

The world is like a children’s playground for me

Where spectacle unfolds day and night

***

हस्ती के मत फरेब में आ जाइयो असद

आलम तमाम हल्क़ा-ए-दाम-ए-ख़याल है

(Hasti ke mat fareb mein aa jaiyo Asad

Aalam tamaam halqa-e-daam-e-khayal hai)

ग़ालिब

Do not be taken in by the deceptions (lures) of existence

The universe is but links of a chain of thought

--Ghalib

One can argue that there is no need to second-guess the meaning of these verses because it is self-evident in the way Ghalib has expressed it. I am not so sure. Poets do not necessarily express the way they are often interpreted. So many things are written impulsively or reflexively in a very particular context without really thinking about their more profound meaning. It is not inconceivable that a poet does not write something with the express intention of being profound.

Even for a poet of Ghalib’s peerless caliber, there ought to have been times when he just impulsively wrote something that went on to acquire increasingly deeper meaning for subsequent generations than he might have intended. A century and a half is a reasonably long time for very diverse generations of admirers of poetry to have interacted with these very verses and inferred their own meanings. Or, in other words, second-guess.

One can only assume that Ghalib’s state of mind when he wrote these verses, as part of full ghazals, was what the words in the verses reveal. We cannot be certain about that assumption. That is why it is an assumption.

My point is the meaning of all poetry, at any rate good and great poetry, is necessarily second-guessed to some degree. That is where science so fundamentally differs from poetry. There is no second-guessing a scientist in terms what is already established via theories and mathematical equations.  That may be one of the reasons why more people are drawn to poetry than physics because while the former allows a freedom of interpretation, the latter does not. Of course, there is an exception like quantum mechanics where interpretations do come into play. That is for another time.

Madhubala, Marilyn Monroe and Venus

(I am acutely conscious that the likeness is disastrous here but I am still going ahead using this pastel of mine as if it were Madhubala)

On the 86^th birthday today of the great Indian star Madhubala, regarded as Hindi cinema’s most beautiful woman, I start off with a tangential point and then republish a very short post I wrote on July 9, 2010.

Madhubala has been reflexively called the “Venus of India”, Venus being the resplendent “Morning Star” and Earth’s closest twin planet. The only reason why any beautiful woman may be compared to Venus is because of the planet’s stunningly bright presence in the sky. As a poet of longstanding, I am long familiar with poetic license. I use it but sparingly. I do not compare humans with planets or stars as a rule and on the rare occasions I have done so, I have done so ironically.

Here is why calling Madhubala Venus is a bit of a problem. As a planet, Venus has none of the qualities that would be life-affirming. Let me quote some bits from a post I wrote on June 21, 2016 to make my point again.

I frequently think about how at utter variance the poetic and the scientific can be. Dwelling in both worlds I understand the need for either to human existence but nothing stops me from pointing out the chasm between what we poetically imagine things around us to be and how different they are in scientific terms. The latest example is Venus, the second rock from the sun.

For a very long time Venus has been emblematic of beauty, particularly feminine beauty, fertility, prosperity and everything that is life-giving. That is a poetic construct that builds on the planet’s gorgeously bright appearance in the sky and nothing much else. As any science teacher would tell you Venus as a planet is as far removed from beauteous graces as it can be.

Consider some basic facts about the planet that is about 67 million miles or about 3/4 as far as the Earth is from the sun. That proximity to the sun makes Venus like various versions of hell. It has a haze of sulfuric acid in the atmosphere and has surface temperatures around 860 F (460 C), which is high enough to melt lead. In comparison, my home town of Ahmedabad recently reported surface temperature ranging between 46 and 50 degrees C. Its atmospheric pressure is about 100 times more than the Earth’s. It is an utterly dry planet where no amount of moisturizer, presuming you survived sulfuric acid haze and 860 F, would help.

Venus is the most Earth-like planet in terms if its size and gravity with a diameter of 7500 miles and 91 % of the Earth’s respectively. Because it is closer to the sun, its year is about 225 Earth days. Then in a weird twist, its day is about 243 Earth days because the planet rotates once every 243 days. Those on the Earth who complain their day is not nearly long enough to accomplish all the fantastic things they want to should consider relocating to Venus. If you can reconcile, remember the Venusian day is longer than its year.

Now comes a paper by Glyn Collinson, a scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, the journal Geophysical Research Letters that speaks of a powerful electric wind on the planet. So if the sulfuric acid haze, 860 F, 100 times denser atmosphere and 243-Earth-day-long Venusian day are not enough for you, you have an electric wind on the planet. “We never dreamt an electric wind could be so powerful that it can suck oxygen right out of an atmosphere into space. This is something that has to be on the checklist when we go looking for habitable planets around other stars,” Collinson says in a NASA release.

When you consider all these facts you begin to understand the massive chasm between the poetic and the scientific. If your conception of real beauty is that it is a beauty that burns and chokes you to death or simply melts you down, then Venus is your thing.

Now the post about Madhubala and Marilyn Monroe dated July 9, 2010:

Every time I see Marilyn Monroe, I think of Madhubala and every time I see Madhubala I think of Marilyn Monroe. For me they are seamlessly interchangeable. They trigger the same set of neurons in my brain. Apart from the obvious ethereal beauty of both women, what brings them together for me is an inexplicable but ever so light touch of tragedy on their faces. It seems sadness always stalks pure beauty.

As always, such observations have no basis in fact but are merely instinctual inferences that may or may not be true. However, they are never less than compelling, I hope.

Both women died at the age 36. Monroe was born in 1926 and died in 1962. Madhubala was born seven years later, in 1933, and died, seven years after Monroe in 1969. Both conveyed a sense of having embarked on an undefined lifelong search and, equally, having profoundly failed to find whatever it is they were looking for.

Both changed their given names, Madhubala from Mumtaz Begum Jehan Dehlavi and Marilyn Monroe from Norma Jeane Mortenson/Baker. I am not even going to stretch this comparison and say how close Jeane and Jehan sound. There, I said it any way. Both captured the national imagination of their respective countries with an effortlessness that is the defining quality of great beauty.

Something, let’s call it intuition, tells me that had the two of them met, they would have understood each other in the first second of their interaction without exchanging a word. And then they would have agreed never to meet again.

Momentary meaning within ultimate meaninglessness

That the universe is eventually meaningless or pointless has long been my favorite view of it since age 13. As I drift towards my 60^th year in about a couple of years, that view has not necessarily changed but the exasperation why it is so has grown very significantly.

The theme of the universe’s pointlessness or meaninglessness has come under a fresh focus as part of my next book “What does Jupiter really do?” The book is about 65 percent complete and I hope to wrap it up by March end. The book concludes with an essay about this very theme. Perhaps one of the mistakes we make while debating this theme is that we see the universe as having a point or a meaning as its final step. It is as if once we have cracked the meaning of or point to the universe we have answered the ultimate existential question. In the book, I take a different approach.

My basic view is that the meaning or point about the universe is a perpetually unfolding process. The meaning or the point is in the moment. For instance, I chanced upon a video this morning about how a copper wire reacts to an aqueous silver nitrate solution. It is a visually striking chemical process where it produces solid silver and copper nitrate. The way silver forms around the copper wire is magical. While watching that it struck me that perhaps the meaning of or the point to the universe is a process that is dynamic. It has no fixed ultimate point or meaning.

I had a similar response while looking at trees with iced up branches this morning glistening like silver in the sunlight. That visual spectacle will last for a bit and then end, offering a transient point or meaning to an aspect of the universe. I suppose that’s the best way to answer a lifelong quest. The universe is ultimately pointless or meaningless but within that has indescribably large numbers of momentary points or meanings to it.

Earth is greener because of India and China

It may seem counterintuitive to many but not to me to find that India and China are the two leading contributors to the significant increase in the greening of Earth in the last 20 years.

A new study in the journal Nature Sustainability as reported by NASA says that the world is “literally a greener place than it was 20 years ago, and data from NASA satellites has revealed a counterintuitive source for much of this new foliage: China and India.”

It says the effect stems mainly from ambitious tree planting programs in China and intensive agriculture in both countries.

“The greening phenomenon was first detected using satellite data in the mid-1990s by Ranga Myneni of Boston University and colleagues, but they did not know whether human activity was one of its chief, direct causes. This new insight was made possible by a nearly 20-year-long data record from a NASA instrument orbiting the Earth on two satellites. It’s called the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, or MODIS, and its high-resolution data provides very accurate information, helping researchers work out details of what’s happening with Earth’s vegetation, down to the level of 500 meters, or about 1,600 feet, on the ground,” NASA reports.

“Taken all together, the greening of the planet over the last two decades represents an increase in leaf area on plants and trees equivalent to the area covered by all the Amazon rain forests. There are now more than two million square miles of extra green leaf area per year, compared to the early 2000s – a 5% increase,” NASA says.

“China and India account for one-third of the greening, but contain only 9% of the planet’s land area covered in vegetation – a surprising finding, considering the general notion of land degradation in populous countries from overexploitation,” Chi Chen of the Department of Earth and Environment at Boston University, in Massachusetts, and lead author of the study, has been quoted as saying.

The reason why I do not find the results counterintuitive is because India has historically accorded flora and fauna a central place in human existence. China too has had a similar approach, especially to plant life. Of course, that civilizational attitude by itself may not have been enough to ensure that their land remains green. There has been a myriad of afforestation movements in both countries for decades. That is bound to show such results over periods of time.

“This long-term data lets us dig deeper,” Rama Nemani, a research scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center, in California’s Silicon Valley, and a co-author of the new work, has been quoted as saying by a NASA release. “When the greening of the Earth was first observed, we thought it was due to a warmer, wetter climate and fertilization from the added carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, leading to more leaf growth in northern forests, for instance. Now, with the MODIS data that lets us understand the phenomenon at really small scales, we see that humans are also contributing.”

“China’s outsized contribution to the global greening trend comes in large part (42%) from programs to conserve and expand forests. These were developed in an effort to reduce the effects of soil erosion, air pollution and climate change. Another 32% there – and 82% of the greening seen in India – comes from intensive cultivation of food crops,” the release said.

Between the two, India’s greening seems more a result of utilitarian considerations than ecological but I know for a fact that planting saplings in large numbers has long been a trend in India.

“Land area used to grow crops is comparable in China and India – more than 770,000 square miles – and has not changed much since the early 2000s. Yet these regions have greatly increased both their annual total green leaf area and their food production. This was achieved through multiple cropping practices, where a field is replanted to produce another harvest several times a year. Production of grains, vegetables, fruits and more have increased by about 35-40% since 2000 to feed their large populations,” the release said.

“How the greening trend may change in the future depends on numerous factors, both on a global scale and the local human level. For example, increased food production in India is facilitated by groundwater irrigation. If the groundwater is depleted, this trend may change,” it said.

“But, now that we know direct human influence is a key driver of the greening Earth, we need to factor this into our climate models,” Nemani said. “This will help scientists make better predictions about the behavior of different Earth systems, which will help countries make better decisions about how and when to take action.”

“The researchers point out that the gain in greenness seen around the world and dominated by India and China does not offset the damage from loss of natural vegetation in tropical regions, such as Brazil and Indonesia. The consequences for sustainability and biodiversity in those ecosystems remain,” the release said.

Nemani said, “Once people realize there’s a problem, they tend to fix it,” he said. “In the 70s and 80s in India and China, the situation around vegetation loss wasn’t good; in the 90s, people realized it; and today things have improved. Humans are incredibly resilient. That’s what we see in the satellite data.”

Me by me--dead

Dead me by me

There is something exhilarating about painting unplanned. On a blank canvas or paper, one lets the hand move as if on autopilot. Occasionally, the result is interesting.

Yesterday, I dropped a few drops of white and grey acrylic paint on a sketch pad and began swirling it with a torn piece of sponge. That was followed by a few oval movements with a purple pastel stick. A face began to emerge and unexpectedly started resembling me.

By the time I finished in about five minutes, I had this sense of what I might look like when dead. This is me by me—dead.

Monet's window

Monet's window--MC

That's all for today.

Even a piddling amount of money can trigger enthusiasm

Mini scarves based on my artworks/painting at VIDA

My plan to turn my paintings and artworks into a range of wearable merchandise via the fashion label VIDA may not have been substantially successful but at the very least, there are some that have sold. This morning, for instance, I received a PayPal alert of a transfer six dollars to my account from VIDA as my Q4 earning. Six dollars is everything to scoff at generally but not if you are me. The way I see it is it pays a little over two gallons of gas these days which is often two gallons too expensive for me.

It is amazing what even a piddling amount like that can do to lift one’s spirits. Prompted by that I uploaded three new designs for mini scarves. I hope they start selling soon. Priced at $35 apiece they are conveniently small to wrap around one’s neck.

On a separate note, I did some quick analysis of likes to sale ratio in my portfolio. I have had 454 likes so far leading to nine items being sold. That works out to be for every 50 likes there is a sale. That figure is a bit misleading when I dig deeper into the numbers. Of the nine, five have sold without any likes at all. The best like to sale ratio is 7 to 1 and the worst 88 to none.

You might wonder what all this has to do with you. Well, nothing at all. It is not as if you pay me to read this blog. Occasionally, you have to lump some personal promotion.