South Asia Daily

Fixating over Edward Hopper's 'Nighthawks'

Edward Hopper's 'Nighthawks' (1942), Image: The Art Institute of Chicago

My version

For the past couple of days, I have been fixated over the great American painter Edward Hopper’s (1882–1967) much celebrated 1942 masterpiece ‘Nighthawks.’ It has been one of the major attractions at the Art Institute of Chicago. For various reasons, most related to the fact that it involves a cost I cannot afford, I have not been able to see it in person although, thanks to Google’s Arts & Culture, I can see it in great close-ups anytime on my computer. I am sure seeing it up close in person is a very different experience.

I did the next best thing that I can do under the circumstances. I painted my version of that. Hopper’s painting, of course, is of a league of its own. It is the work of a breathtakingly meticulous artist so skilled at capturing light in an urban setting. Hopper had said 'Nighthawks' was inspired by “a restaurant on New York’s Greenwich Avenue where two streets meet.” Much has been written about this piece as well as about how, unlike perhaps any other American painter, Hopper was so cinematic in his conception, framing, color and light. There are many movies that pay tribute to his unique visual style. From Robert Siodmak, the German-born master of the film noir, to Alfred Hitchcock are all known to have taken elements of Hopper’s paintings.

Considered the master of depicting isolation and unspoken anguish, Hopper is a great painter to try to emulate but without any success in my case. Until such time as I do manage to visit ‘Nighthawks’ in person, I have the very distant consolation of seeing a version hanging on my wall for now.

Incidentally, I had forgotten about a quick acrylic on paper I had done titled ‘Building’ in early 2018. Looking at it now, I feel as if I were channeling some hopper there without realizing it.

Building--MC

Some quick observations about Kashmir and China-backed Security Council closed-door meeting

First, let me get my bile out at the closed-door meeting yesterday of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to discuss the “India-Pakistan question”.  It is an epic affront that the world’s largest democracy, namely India, had to do a version of pressing its nose against the glass as the 15-member UNSC (five permanent members and ten non-permanent members) deliberated the aftermath of New Delhi’s decision to end the special status of Jammu & Kashmir. That two permanent members of the council, namely China and Russia, are masquerading as democracies adds to that insult.

For a country, whose latest general election barely three months ago witnessed over 600 million people exercise their franchise in a largely systematic and peaceful manner, to be continued to be kept out of the decisive organ of the United Nations is a measure of both how fucked-up (not a technical term, I know) the global order is as well as skewed UN system.

That out of the way, now on to the immediate issue at hand. With China surrogating the discussion for its client state Pakistan one could have predicted without much intelligence that irrespective of the outcome of the informal discussions, they would both spin it as a victory. Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi chirped on Twitter, “Today was a watershed moment as the world took a new turn in the struggle for Kashmir. That the UNSC met for the first time formally since 1965 to discuss Indian Occupied Kashmir was momentous.”

If that’s the best spin Qureshi could put, then it tells you how futile the unstated outcome of the closed-door meeting was. The absence of any public statement by Joanna Wrencka of Poland, the current UNSC president, is the clearest indicator that India had its way in a broad sense despite not being present in the meeting. I would not exult irrationally as many others have to say that it was an unequivocal triumph for New Delhi. It was a reasonable success in thwarting China’s pressure on the UNSC to take a public stand antithetical to India. Given the circumstances, that is not an outcome to scoff at for sure but also not one to get lost into orgiastic paroxysms.

While China’s permanent representative to the UN, Zhang Jun and his Pakistan vis-à-vis Maleeha Lodhi made quick victorious claims in defiance of any public evidence, India’s permanent representative Syed Akbaruddin won the day with his sharply animated rejoinder to the two. “If national statements try to masquerade as the will of the international community, I thought I will come across to you and explain our national position”, Akbaruddin said. In the parlance of global diplomacy, that is the equivalent of throwing shade. However, while at it he made it a point to describe himself as a “conventional diplomat,” adding, “I do my job, rather than add to the fire and fury of heightening tensions”. Burn!

Unlike Jun and Lodhi, Akbaruddin also assertively took questions pointing out that that’s what democracies do. For good measure, he walked up to a couple of Pakistani journalists and shook hands with some theatrical flourish. He was clearly enjoying handing some burn to Jun and Lodhi. And why not? Even the usually dour UN diplomacy can be made a fun outing occasionally.

There is something to be said about the fact that it was for the first time since December, 1971 an issue involving India and Pakistan was taken up at the UNSC. The last time it did that was in relation to the 1971 war that led to the creation of Bangladesh. That fact has some symbolic value that India should keep in mind but nothing that could alter the course it is embarked on. I am not commenting on the merit of the new course here.

China saw an opportunity to needle India at the UNSC, where New Delhi is not a member, and took it. The needle clearly did not penetrate as deep or even at all as Beijing might have hoped for. I am sure it tried very hard to lean on Poland to make a public statement which would have been a matter of concern for India. In its absence and absence also of a clear articulation of what the actual outcome of the meeting was, New Delhi can legitimately claim vindication. Only the diplomats such as Akbaruddin, however, would know the amount of behind-the-scenes jostling and anxious moments that preceded the UNSC president’s decision not to make a public statement. From what I gather Russia’s eventual support for India was not a given. It took some persuasion, especially at a time when President Xi Jinping of China and President Vladimir Putin of Russia have become particularly friendly. Perhaps, Moscow sensed that Beijing’s efforts at the UNSC may not amount to much and decided not to unnecessarily provoke New Delhi.

On balance, the UNSC view in this specific context does nothing to change India’s approach on the ground, China and Pakistan’s boastful claims notwithstanding. At some point India has to take a firmer stand and say that if the UNSC considers it appropriate to keep the world’s largest democracy out of permanent membership, it will reconsider how serious the body’s views on various matters.

Buddha, Suffering, Stephen Colbert and Anderson Cooper

Stephen Colbert, left, and Anderson Cooper

Catching some excerpts of Anderson Cooper’s interview with Stephen Colbert I was especially struck by the former’s observation quoting his favorite author J. R. R. Tolkien saying, “What punishments of god are not gifts?” The essential point being that whatever “god” gives—good, bad, ugly—ought to be considered gifts. I, of course, do not automatically comprehend any of that, including the idea of god. What does any of that mean? Why are punishments gifts? Why is god punishment-oriented? Indeed, why is god at all?

Colbert’s drift was, of course, the reality of suffering in life. “With existence comes suffering. There is no escaping that. I guess I am either a Catholic or a Buddhist.” Purely in historical terms, he would be a Buddhist. The idea of suffering was Gautam Buddha’s original construct some five centuries before the birth of Christ.

In Buddha’s definition of suffering, it is a consequence of attachment to what life has to offer.  As interpreted by Anand K Coomaraswamy (1877-1947), one of the most respected scholars of Buddha and Buddhism, in his book ‘Buddha & the Gospel of Buddhism’ suffering is this: “Birth is attended with pain, decay is painful, disease is painful, death is painful. Union with the unpleasant is painful, painful is separation from the pleasant; and any craving, unsatisfied, that, too is painful. In brief, the five aggregates of clinging (that is, the conditions of individuality) are painful.”

While I understand this at the cerebral level, I do not comprehend at the instinctual, experiential level. Getting a handle on any and all human emotions has always been a challenge for me from childhood. Let’s just say that I do not instinctually comprehend human emotions, nor can I display them on demand. I would say a majority of my responses to any situation with a fellow sentient life is a contrivance. In some ways, it is also an artifice. That extends to my poetry about which I have frequently posited that it does not represent any state of my mind at any given time. In that, it is a purely mechanical construct.

It is only in recent years that I have begun to understand some aspects of human emotions; not so much me having them as why others do and what they do with them. Now it is a smoother trick for me to get into that world. However, that still did not explain the whole idea of god and punishments being god’s gifts. I suppose I do not need to understand them to conclude the remainder of my life since I have managed fairly well what I have lived so far.

On this August 15, remembering a wonderful Gujarati ghazal by Manubhai Trivedi 'Gaafil'

On this August 15, for some reason this wonderful Gujarati ghazal by Manubhai Trivedi 'Gaafil' (July 26, 1914--April 9, 1972) popped up in my mind. I had first heard it recited by the brilliant observational satirist Shahbuddin Rathod. The ghazal, although not necessarily meant for this occasion, superbly captures the unique individuality of us all.

I have rendered a somewhat poetic transliteration in Hindi/Urdu. I was not able to translate last but one verse because I could not come up with the translation for 'Malajey'.

Also note that while Trivedi was well aware that in Gujarati the Z sound is often corrupted into J, he took that poetic license and rhymed it wonderfully. Finally, the repetition such as Mijaze mijaze is also poetic license because that use does not exist in Hindi/Urdu as far as I know.

 

જુદી જિંદગી છે મિજાજે મિજાજે

જુદી બંદગી છે નમાજે નમાજે

 

છે એક જ સમંદર થયું એટલે શું

જુદા છે મુસાફિર જહાજે જહાજે

 

ભલે હોય એક જ અંતર થી વેહતા

છે સુરો જુદેરા રિયાજે રિયાજે

 

જુદા અર્થ છે શબ્દો ના બોલવા પર

છે શબ્દોય જુદા અવાજે અવાજે

 

જીવન જેમ જુદાં છે કાયામાં જુદી

છે મૃત્યુય જુદાં જનાજે જનાજે

 

હઠી જાય ઘૂંઘટ, ઢળી જાય ઘૂંઘટ

જુદી પ્રીત જાગે મલાજે મલાજે

 

તમે કેમ ‘ગાફિલ’ હજી છોય ગાફિલ

જુઓ બદલે દુનિયા તકાજે તકાજે

 

***

 

जुदा ज़िंदगी है मिजाज़े मिजाज़े

जुदा बंदगी है नमाज़े नमाज़े

 

समंदर एक है तो क्या

जुदा है मुसाफिर जहाज़े जहाज़े

 

बेहता हो भले एक ही अंतर से

है सुर अलग रियाज़े रियाज़े

 

जुदा अर्थ शब्दों का बोलने में

जुदा शब्द है आवाज़े आवाज़े

 

जीवन जुदा है जुदी काया में

मृत्यु भी जुदा है जनाज़े जनाज़े

 

‘गाफ़िल’ तुम हो क्यूँ गाफ़िल

दुनिया बदलती है तकाज़े तकाज़े

 

--मनुभाई त्रिवेदी ‘गाफ़िल’

I sleep in mistrust, Wake up in hope

फनकार हूँ मैं

रात को सोता हूँ बदगुमानी में

सुबह जागता हूँ उम्मीद में

दोनों के दरम्यां

गुज़रती है ख्वाबों की गिरफ्त में

--मयंक छाया 

(बदगुमानी -- mistrust, suspicion)

I am an artist

I sleep in mistrust

Wake up in hope

In between,

Trapped in the grip of dreams

--Mayank Chhaya

Heisenberg calls Schrödinger

Erwin Schrödinger (Photo: Courtesy www.nobelprize.org)

Yesterday happened to be the great physicist Erwin Schrödinger's 132nd birth anniversary. He was born on August 12, 1887 and died on January 4, 1961. I have convinced myself that since I was born barely two days after Schrödinger's death that very year, I am his reincarnation. Levity aside, Schrödinger has featured frequently in my posts. I republish two of my favorite posts about him and both are entirely fictional.

One was written in August, 2013 and the other July,2014. 

August 30, 2014

Here is an imaginary phone conversation between Werner Heisenberg (WH) and Erwin Schrödinger (ES) that I have imagined to have taken place in the early 1930s, let’s say 1933. The situation is that the two great physicists were supposed to meet for coffee at a café in Berlin but Heisenberg has been delayed. So he telephones Schrodinger at the café.

A waiter tells Schrödinger that there is a call for him.

ES: Where are you? When are you reaching? I have been waiting for half an hour.

WH: I couldn’t tell you precisely where I am and when I might reach?

ES: I asked where you are and not where particles are.

WH: I am, like we all are, made up of particles. So if we cannot simultaneously tell a particle’s position and momentum with any precision, how am I going to tell you where I am and when I might reach?

ES (Sounding a bit exasperated): Werner, I don’t want to get into the whole physics of particles and position and momentum with you on phone.

WH: Why? Is it because you think I may not understand it? I am the whole physics of particles and position and momentum after all.

ES: That’s funny. So what’s taking you so long?

WH: Oh some problem at home but I thought I should call you to get started on what we planned to discuss while I reach.

ES: And you don’t know when you might reach because…

WH: I know my position. I am at home. But I don’t know about my momentum because it depends.

ES: Depends on what?

WH: It depends on so many variables, including whether there is a parade by those horrible Brown Shirts. We both know there is no predicting their position and momentum. Now that is one tough uncertainty that I oppose based on my principles.

They both laugh.

ES: Tell me anyway how this whole principle of your works. What are you saying really? It makes no sense to me. Are you saying that the act of observation affects a particle such that we cannot determine its position? Are you saying that our act of observation physically affects that particle?

WH: Erwin, Erwin, dear friend, you cannot be that simplistic. You know the so-called observer effect works at the quantum level. I don’t have to tell you that.

ES: Yes, yes but the whole Uncertainty Principle makes no sense to me. It is too clever for its own good.

WH: Says the man who locks up an imaginary cat inside an imaginary box with an imaginary vial of radioactive poison and then says the cat can be both dead and alive? Yeah, what’s with the cat? If it does not exist, why should it be dead or alive?

ES: So are you coming or not?

WH: Yes.

ES: Yes to coming or yes to not?

WH: Think of me as your cat. I may come or not because I may exist or not or both exist and not exist.

They both laugh again.

***

July 17, 2013

A neighbor to Erwin Schrödinger: What do you feed your cat?

You have to be in the realm to get this “ultra-highbrow humor” because first you have to know who Schrodinger is and then the relevance of the feline reference and the whole thought experiment around an imaginary cat inside an imaginary box which is both dead and alive simultaneously in a mindfuck paradox.

So anyway, after I wrote that line, it occurred to me that there is potential here for a full play. The basic plot is that the Nobel Prize winning physicist Erwin Schrodinger is being tried for killing his cat. The ultra-highbrow humor part is that there was no cat and since there was no cat, it was not killed. The cat was imaginary and so was his death, if it did happen. It was one of science’s greatest thought experiments.

Caution: What I have written here is entirely, 100 percent fiction. There was no such court case and no such trial just as there was no such cat.

Any resemblance to the dead or the living or the living dead or the dead living or the in between is incidental and/or deliberate and/or deliberately incidental and/or incidentally deliberate.

Part I

Time: 1935

Time: 9.30 a.m.

Venue: Bundesgerichtshof, the Federal Court of Justice, Berlin

Judge Volkard Strauss presiding. The judge is intently reading his notes.

Case # 24246, The Third Reich versus Erwin Schrödinger

Case history:

Erwin Schrödinger (ES) has been charged with culpable felinicide even though the police have not been able to determine whether the cat was dead or alive. What threw them off was the accused’s oblique suggestion that the cat could be both dead and alive. In his police statement, Schrodinger said the following:

“A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following device (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat): in a Geiger counter, there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small that perhaps in the course of the hour, one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges, and through a relay releases a hammer that shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The psi-function of the entire system would express this by having in it the living and dead cat mixed or smeared out in equal parts. It is typical of these cases that an indeterminacy originally restricted to the atomic domain becomes transformed into macroscopic indeterminacy, which can then be resolved by direct observation. That prevents us from so naively accepting as valid a "blurred model" for representing reality. In itself, it would not embody anything unclear or contradictory. There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks.”

Judge Strauss (JS) is questioning the first witness for the prosecution, Frau Frauke (FF), a next door neighbor of Schrödinger's :

JS: Describe to me your encounter with Prof. Schrödinger on the morning of the police raid.

FF: We exchanged pleasantries but he seemed preoccupied. He always seemed preoccupied. I asked him about his cat.

JS: What about the cat?

FF: I was curious to know what he fed his cat because I never saw him feed it. I never saw the cat either.

JS: And what did he tell you?

FF: He said there was no cat to feed but if he had one he would choose hydrocyanic acid.

JS: (Taken aback): Hydrocyanic acid? Why?

FF: I couldn’t tell you that because he never told me why. He only said something about a radioactive substance and hammer smashing the flask inside a box.

JS: You seem familiar with scientific terms.

FF: I am a retired science teacher. I retired from teaching but not science.

JS (Smiling): Let me ask you a direct question. Do you think Prof. Schrödinger killed his cat?

FF: Well, I never saw the cat but that does not mean he did not kill it. It also does not mean that if he had one he killed it.

JS: Did you experience any foul smell emanating from his apartment?

FF:  I did and I confronted him about it.

JS:  What was his explanation?

FF:  He said it was the stench of a decaying genius.

JS:  And you believed him?

FF:  Not quite but there was a high probability that it was indeed the stench of a decaying genius.

JS: Then why did you alert the police?

FF: Who would not like to save a decaying genius?

By now Prof. Schrödinger, sitting along with his attorney, is laughing. The judge notices him and says:

JS: You find something amusing professor?

ES:  Only the notion that a decaying genius has a stench.

JS turns to FF and excuses her from the witness stand. He directs ES to come to the witness box.

JS: I do not wish to continue your testimony today much long because I want to recess the court early. But before I do that, let’s go through a few questions.

JS: So is the cat dead or alive?

ES: That depends.

JS: On what?

ES: On whether an atom decayed, the tube discharged, the hammer fell, the flask shattered and the hydrocyanic acid spilled. Only then could the cat die.

JS: So the cat did die.

ES: That depends.

JS: On what?

ES: On whether an atom decayed, the tube discharged, the hammer fell, the flask shattered and the hydrocyanic acid spilled. Only then could the cat die.

JS: (Exasperated): But you already said that once. Why are you saying it again?

ES: Because you asked me again. Asking the question again does not change my answer.

JS: You have said during your interrogation that the cat could be both dead and alive. How is that possible?

ES: That is not possible. I said probable.

JS: That’s a distinction without a difference.

ES: I would call them distinctly different.

JS: Let me ask in simple terms. Is the damn cat dead or alive?

ES: If all of the above conditions were met, then it is likely that it died. If not, it is likely it is alive. But we have no way of knowing unless we open the box. So for us, without opening the box the cat is both dead and alive at any given time.

JS: Where is the box and how big is it?

ES: There is no box.

JS: Be that as it may, what poison did you feed your cat?

ES: I did not feed my cat anything because it did not exist.

JS: Then why have you been charged with killing the cat?

ES: It is an imaginary cat inside an imaginary box equipped with an imaginary radioactive substance from which an imaginary atom may or may not decay and the tube may or may not discharge and the hammer may or may not fall and the acid may or may not be released. Hence, the cat, which does not exist, may or may not die. And unless we open the box that also does not exist we may or may not know whether the imaginary cat is dead or alive.

By now, the judge is ready to tear his hair out. He throws the gavel at Schrödinger who ducks. The gavel falls on the courtroom floor. The floor shatters like glass. A dark golden brown cat jumps out from underneath. He rubs his body against Schrodinger’s right shoe and jumps on to the judge’s dais. He thumps his paw and says:

“If you think I exist, I think you should see Dr. Freud who, by the way, is real.”

P.S.: Some day I hope to complete the play.

Some thoughts on Dr. Vikram Sarabhai's 100th anniversary

There is something oddly defensive and weirdly patronizing when prominent members of the Congress Party go out of their way to emphasize how it was Jawaharlal Nehru who “selected”, “handpicked”, “chose” Dr. Vikram Sarabhai to lead India’s space program.

A couple of factual points first. Today happens to be Dr. Sarabhai’s 100^th anniversary. Although he died relatively early at 52 on December 30, 1971, he remains peerless in creating an astonishingly diverse group of great institutions. I am personally not aware of a comparable figure anywhere in the world whose range of work spread over textile research, management studies, satellite communication and remote sensing, apart from, of course, the much celebrated space and nuclear energy.

It is true that Nehru entrusted him the task but that in and of itself illustrates nothing more than the fact that the country’s first prime minister had the intelligence to recognize great talent when he saw one. Dr. Sarabhai’s success, while attributable to some extent to the political ecology encouraging innovation in a nascent nation under Nehru, was clearly much more than just that. The Congress Party has become understandably sensitive to the relentless campaign to reject Nehru’s contributions by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its many affiliates.  It is best not to use a truly great visionary as a pawn in that ugly game.

It is hard to define whether Dr. Sarabhai was a physicist at heart or a broad-base visionary for whom applied physics was one of the key features of nation-building. At some level, it is not important to define him with one label.

As the well-known journalist and writer Amrita Shah, who wrote a definitive biography ‘Vikram Sarabhai—A Life (2007)’, says, “Sarabhai had a complex vision in which all his activities were interconnected. The SITE (the Satellite Instructional Television Experiment) which involved taking television to remote villages for example called upon managerial capabilities, software development, feedback etc.—you can see that building a management college, a market research agency, the community science center etc. ( all of Sarabhai’s initiatives) were all apiece with this vision. Yes, space did have a very special place in his heart and it was the means through which he had found a way of meeting both his social and scientific goals.”

Journalist and writer Amrita Shah

“Space was an extension of Vikram Sarabhai's  scientific interest in studying cosmic rays. Unlike most scientists Sarabhai was possessed of a vision that transcended scientific discovery. He wanted to use science for social uplift and in space technology he saw an opportunity to achieve this goal. It is true that space programs were generally initiated for military purposes and the Indian space program struck a pioneering path. Sarabhai believed that as a poor, underdeveloped country India needed to prioritize literacy and economic progress. One can trace his strong identification with the national interest to his family's deep involvement in the freedom struggle; many members of his family, including his sister Mridula had been jailed and taken great risks. His aunt Ansuya had founded a union of textile laborers. The family’s closeness to Gandhi may also have had an impact in shaping his commitment,” Amrita says.

For any person being regarded as the father of something as ambitious as a country’s space program would have been a life-defining accomplishment but Dr. Sarabhai was so eclectic in his approach to nation-building that he consciously founded so many great institutions. As listed by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), which he pioneered, it is extraordinary to say the least.

• Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), Ahmedabad
• Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad
• Community Science Centre, Ahmedabad
• Darpan Academy for Performing Arts, Ahmedabad (along with his wife Mrinalini)
• Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Thiruvananthapuram
• Space Applications Centre, Ahmedabad (This institution came into existence after merging six institutions/centers established by Sarabhai)
• Faster Breeder Test Reactor (FBTR), Kalpakkam
• Varaiable Energy Cyclotron Project, Calcutta
• Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL), Hyderabad
• Uranium Corporation of India Limited (UCIL), Jaduguda, Bihar

I asked Amrita if there would have been an Indian space program without Dr. Sarabhai, she said, “Yes, I believe at some point there would have been a space program. It might have gone the disappointing way of many of India’s scientific institutions; it might have been more military—a wing of the DRDO (Defence Research and Development Organisation), maybe. Sarabhai's vision, his ability to inspire, and to combine the idealistic with the practical and of course his stature gave the space program a foundation and a profile. Dr. Kasturi Rangan, former head of ISRO told me the space program was still realizing Sarabhai's vision over thirty years (now 48 years) after his death which testifies to his far sightedness.”

On the larger question of why Dr. Sarabhai is not as widely celebrated as he should be, Amrita says, “I guess in a poor country like India there is no infrastructure for writing our histories. Dr. Sarabhai is just one of many forgotten figures. That said, I think in his case perhaps his story and personality were complex. People prefer the rah rah story for the bomb. Also, it is really tough to write about his many accomplishments interestingly as you ask -- usually his profile sounds dull just because people simply list everything he did. I handled it by presenting what he did and what it meant in the history of each area but also trying to find the common thread i.e. his vision and how that activity fitted into the story of his life.

It is also true that there is a time for a person to be appreciated. The space program is just coming into the limelight now and people are beginning to talk about him.

Perhaps if he had a single institution devoted to building him up—unlike (Dr. Homi) Bhabha his time was cut short so much earlier in the institution's history. Nevertheless, ISRO is celebrating his centenary in a big way. So maybe things will change.  Also, the Sarabhai archive needs to be made more accessible to researchers.”

Many have pointed out with perfect justification that it is a national failure that someone of Dr. Sarabhai’s accomplishments has not been honored with India’s highest civilian recognition—the Bharat Ratna (Jewel of India). This is while three recent politicians—two late prime ministers Rajiv Gandhi and Atal Bihari Vajpayee and one former president Pranab Mukherjee have all been so honored. It is a debate I have no interest in dwelling on because high achievers such as Dr. Sarabhai’s motivations are very different compared to the usual run-of-the-mill ones.

It is just as well that ISRO has named its moon lander ‘Vikram’ as part of the moon mission ‘Chandrayan’ which is currently on its way to the Earth’s satellite.

Death, Epicurus, Chandrakant Bakshi and I

Death is occasionally on my mind; not necessarily my death but the philosophical finality of death. Yesterday, it was triggered by a strange recommendation on YouTube in a list of videos I might like. The first one was an interview with the much regarded and prolific Gujarati novelist Chandrakant Bakshi (1932-2006).

The recommended video was a conversation with Bakshi by the popular public speaker and columnist Jay Vasavada. I have no clue by which algorithmic intelligence YouTube would make such a recommendation because I had never before watched any video interview of Bakshi’s. Nevertheless, I am happy it did because it sent me off on a tangent of my own.

I knew Bakshi very well. In the 1980s, he was a frequent visitor to my newspaper office on Nagindas Master Road in then Bombay’s (now Mumbai’s) Dalal Street/Fountain area. Despite the age difference of nearly 30 years between him and I, we hit it off instantly. I knew of him as a great novelist without actually having read any of his books. I told him that and he had a hearty laugh. “Keep it that way. Don’t read my novels because you might change your opinion about my greatness as a writer,” Bakshi said in sharp self-deprecation. I quickly discovered that he was a renegade soul. That’s what connected us. Even if I say so myself, our conversations were an absolute delight, a sort of intellectual tour de force from both sides.

He was an unabashed hedonist who liked and deeply believed in the good life. “Mayankbabu, life must be lived well,” he used to tell me using the suffix babu as a reminder to me of his strong literary and intellectual connection with Calcutta (now Kolkata). In the context of his hedonism, he would discuss his fascination with the Greek philosopher Epicurus  (341 BCE- 270 BCE), father of Epicureanism which advocates hedonism. Epicurus had a famous observation about death. "Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist," he had said.

By a remarkable coincidence, in this particular interview Bakshi does make a reference to Epicurus and his own preoccupation with death. Bakshi and I too used to discuss death then.

The interview’s reference to Epicurus took me back to my conversations with him in the mid-1980s. It also triggered the following. It is my extrapolation of Epicurus’ views on death:

मैं जब हूँ तो मृत्यु नहीं है

और जब मृत्यु है तो मैं नहीं हूँ

फिर किस बात का संघर्ष

और किस बात की पीड़ा

एक क्षण होगा जब हम पास से गुज़रेंगे

मगर वोह इतना क्षण भंगुर होगा की

मुझे ज्ञात होने से पहले ही बीत जायेगा

उस के पश्च्यात क्या संघर्ष और क्या पीड़ा?

***

When I am around, death is not

When death is around, I am not

Then what is the struggle?

What is the pain?

There will be a moment when we will pass each other

But that would be so transient

That before I experience it,

It will be gone

After that what struggle and what pain?

--MC

Rediscovering a forgotten story out of Kashmir circa 1995

Very few journalists I know excel at or care about cataloging and archiving their work in any systematic manner. I am not one of those few. I wish I had preserved clippings of my writings over the last three and half decades for my personal reference, particularly of stories such as those I wrote out of reporting from Jammu and Kashmir between 1990-1996. So it is always heartening to discover a reference made to some of those on the net.

This morning I chanced upon one on the United Nations High Commission for Refugee’s (UNHCR) website. The reference draws from the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. I found it while looking for a piece I had done out of Ladakh in the 1990s. One has written so much over the decades that I have forgotten more than what many journalists might have written.

The reference on the UNHCR says the following:

According to the 1981 census, cited in a 9 June 1995 article in the Toronto-based newspaper India Abroad, there are over 100,000 Sikhs in Jammu and Kashmir of a total population of 8 million.*

According to the 9 June 1995 India Abroad article, Sikhs and other religious minorities are strongly opposed to the Muslim separatist struggle in Jammu and Kashmir and want to be part of India.

To ensure that it was drawn from my writing I confirmed the reference where it says the information was taken from a report by me headlined ‘In Kashmir, Little Hope and Lots of Frustration’ published in the Toronto edition of the New York-Based weekly India Abroad of which I was then the South Asia chief correspondent.

It has been close to a quarter century since that story appeared and, unfortunately, one can write that very headline to any story today out of Kashmir and still be perfectly accurate. Now that Jammu & Kashmir have become a union territory, the question about how the valley’s non-Muslim minorities are to be treated will become more urgent. Of course, the key element of Kashmir’s once gloriously syncretic traditions is its Kashmir Pandit community—whose number was over 250,000—that was forced out of their homes and lives in the early 1990s as a violent separatist insurgency began to entrench itself. I was among the first journalists to significantly report on the plight of the Pandits out of Jammu as well as Delhi where many of them had fled to. I remember having done an extensive cover story which we used to call ‘Top of the Week’ for India Abroad.

If you are looking for a particular reason for this post, it is only that one has been there, done that. Perhaps it is time to be there again and do it all over again. It is self-indulgent. 

*The state’s population prior to being bifurcated was about 13 million, according to the 2011 census.

From across seven centuries, Liang Kai and I

Immortal--Liang Kai, 1279

My pencil version

And acrylics-oil pastels on canvas

Here is a compelling example of the power of art across centuries. I chanced upon a work by a 13^th century Chinese painter named Liang Kai (1210 CE). Google Arts & Culture describes his thus:

“Liang Kai was a Chinese painter of the Southern Song Dynasty. He was also known as Madman Liang. He was born in Shandong and worked in Lin An. He is known to have studied with the master Jia Shigu.

He was awarded the rank of Painter-in-Attendance at the court of Jia Tai where he was known for mastery in painting figures, landscapes, and other minor subjects. He is most famous for originating or developing the "Xie Yi" of painting, where the objective is to evoke the subject or atmosphere with minimal use of detail; it requires a profound mastery of painting technique and perfect concentration, but also allows for the beauty of accidental effects.

As the Painter-in-Attendance serving the Imperial Painting Academy during the reign of Emperor Ningzong (1201-1204) of the Southern Song Dynasty (960-1279), Liang Kai excelled in painting figures, landscapes, Buddhist and Taoist themes, spirits and deities. His incomparable painting skills won him recognition from not only his peers but also the emperor. Liang, however, known for his unrestrained manners, refused to accept the supreme honor, the Golden Belt bestowed by the emperor, rather, he left it on the wall of the academy.

Calling himself “Madman Liang”, Liang Kai was crazy about drinking wine. Most of his extant works are paintings with few cursive strokes employing the technique of “abbreviated brush”, meaning reduced number of brushstrokes. A drunken immortal with a tottering step and a charmingly naïve countenance was depicted in this work by the artist with flowing strokes and well-splashed ink. It seems that the painter himself must have improvised this works after drinking wine so that he managed to create a vivid deity with an unusual appearance and funny looks by using just several strokes.

Liang, under the influence of Zen, had shrugged off the yokes that painting should be a truthful representation of the archetype, a practice advocated by the official painting school of the Song Dynasty, and proposed to convey the spirit and temperaments of the characters with few free strokes. In order to do so, he applied the ink-splashing technique used in the landscape painting into the illustration of figures, developing his only style of conveying the spirit with restrained use of ink, which has exerted a great influence on painting of both China and Japan.”

Considering the passage of over seven centuries, it does not appear that much of his work survived. Of the ones that do survive, a piece titled ‘Immortal’, done in splashed ink circa 1270 caught my attention the other day. I did a quick pencil interpretation of it, followed by acrylics-oil pastels on canvas.

I am inordinately thrilled that what happened in China 740 years ago came to me via a confluence of technologies and became my tribute to Kai in 2019. If this is not magical, what is?