Mayank Chhaya Daily

Finance Minister God

I am told India has a new finance minister—god.

One has heard many disingenuously inventive alibis for a failing economy. “An act of god” as apparently blamed by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman must rank among all-time greats.

This reminds me of a chief reporter at a newspaper I worked for in Bombay (It was Bombay then.) I used to be marked for the night shift frequently in those days of the early 1980s. The chief reporter, whom I am not naming out of decency, would call unfailingly every night before the paper went to bed to ask me or whoever was the night shift reporter, “Everything under control?” Not that he was expecting any answer at all or that any answer made a difference. Irrespective of what the answer was—everything under control or nothing under control—he would complete the conversation with “God is great.”

We used to joke that he expected god to be our chief reporter.

In a similar vein, Sitharaman expects god to be India’s finance minister. To the extent that the COVID pandemic has seriously upended India’s economy, one understands the sentiment behind what the finance minister is saying. There is some there there. God, of course, is notional. Atheists, please read that as “an act of god who does not exist.” The point is she is seeking to transfer the blame to forces beyond human control.

I am not sure whether she realized that she was setting herself up for some ridicule and derision. Perhaps she did and did not care. Perhaps she did not and is now discovering the political folly of that argument. In some ways, the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is similar to the administration of President Donald Trump here in America. No failure of theirs seems to stick for any significant length of time. People want peacocks to be fed well and regularly and dogs be cared for but I am sure they also want them to be looked after as well.

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President Donald Trump’s acceptance speech at the White House bringing to conclusion the Republican National Convention was as much his acceptance speech as it was his daughter’s Ivanka’s intention speech. “I will run in 2024” was writ all over that speech. Whether or not she does, at least the optics were clear.

If Ivanka does indeed do that, it would be interesting to see how Nikki Haley, former South Carolina Governor and someone widely expected to jump in for 2024, might position herself. That would queer the pitch for Haley. (Queer the pitch is a British expression which means to spoil someone’s chances). I am all for 2024 becoming an all-women race from both sides of the divide.

It has long been my case America needs a woman president for the next 235 years in order for us to do a fair comparison between the genders. Incidentally, the figure 235 was calculated on the basis of the fact that George Washington on April 30, 1789. Considering until 2024—that is 235 years since his time—there will not be a woman president, we need to count after that.

Does anyone doubt that if Ivanka Trump does indeed run in 2024, her doting father will pull out all stops to make it happen? What happens to Governor Haley then? I know. I know. It is all too early and speculative to get into it right now but people made the same mistake when President Trump as candidate Trump.

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Lately, I have been slacking in writing my blog daily, having missed some in succession. I am back now. In any case, it is not as if you pay me to read this blog.

Here is to Rambhai

From left, my sister Pallavi, Rambhai and the Dalai Lama

“Scamp and scalawag are my two words of the day. What are yours?” Rambhai asked me.

“Mine are gimcrack and gasconade,” I replied.

On hearing the news of the demise of my cherished brother-in-law, retired Gujarat high court judge Harshvardhan Antani, whom we called Rambhai, at age 72 yesterday, this was the instant recall for me.

Come to think of it there could not be a more fitting reminiscence of someone, who quite like me, loved to read the dictionary. Incidentally, scamp means a person, especially a child, who is mischievous in a likable or amusing way, scalawag means a person who behaves badly but in an amusingly mischievous rather than harmful way; a rascal, (The two can be broadly called synonyms), gimcrack means flimsy or poorly made but deceptively attractive and gasconade extravagant boasting. They are all American slang.

It is a great tribute to Rambhai that my first memory on his passing was that exchange from 1978, about a year after he married my sister Pallavi in May, 1977, when I was 17 and he 29.

As I think about Rambhai over the last four decades, it is hard for me to decide what he loved the most, absolutely top of the line mangoes, obscure words, Test cricket and within that Sunil Gavaskar, Vivian Richards and Alistair Cook, every top of the line international news, science, travel and sports journal that he subscribed to unfailingly for decades or jurisprudence. Let me make it easy for me by saying all those in equal measure and top it off with his genuine love for great newspapers. There were times when I used to joke that Rambhai singlehandedly kept the newspaper and magazine business alive—be it Wisden, The Economist, Nature and at least a dozen or so more apart from as many newspapers regularly.

Speaking of Sunil Gavaskar, Vivian Richards and Alistair Cook, for as long as I remember one could not say something even remotely negative about the three great cricketers, especially the first two. Gavaskar, in fact, became Rambhai’s friend whom the latter hosted at his Ahmedabad home and corresponded with.  As for Cook, my sister did something heartbreakingly touching in Rambhai’s final but fully alert moments. Apart from showing him his parents, Bindubhai and Harvidyaben's photograph, Pallavi showed Rambhai Alistair Cook’s photograph. He was that fond of Cook. 

Here was perhaps the most steadfast admirer of the Test cricket format of the game that I know of in the midst of the testosterone-fueled T20/Indian Premier League world. Rambhai would watch the five-day game being played anywhere with great relish. Separately, he was an excellent mimic of cricket commentators, including Tony Cozier, Vijay Merchant and so on.

Endowed with a naturally joyous temperament, Rambhai was a serious judge of unimpeachable integrity and rectitude. He was always steadfast in recusal even at the slightest hint of a conflict of interests. Not given to flashy flourishes he leaned more on the sober, scholarly side of things in his chosen profession, first as a lawyer and then as a judge who rose through the ranks to become a high court judge in Gujarat. He could have easily ended up on the country’s Supreme Court but for combination of retirement age and some amount of political play. He brooked no interference in his work irrespective of who was doing the interfering. Whether or one likes to admit it, that approach is counterproductive in the Indian judiciary when it comes to rising on the basis of pure merit.

The only child of a well-placed bureaucrat in his father, Rambhai made the best of all the professional opportunities that came his way. His post-retirement life became intensely busy as he become a much sought after former judge in matters of arbitration.

Rambhai and my sister Pallavi, whom we call Bebli, made a wonderfully happy couple who have had no children. They would have loved to have children but that was not to be.

There is a great deal one remembers of Rambhai and his substantive life but what still remains vivid is the passion and enthusiasm with which he did his vegetable shopping. He insisted on doing it himself, subjecting each mango or a potato or a tomato or an eggplant to meticulous scrutiny just as he would do to every magazine that he bought making sure there was not a single page bent or askew. He preserved his favorite journals, such as Nature, National Geographic, Wisden and other expensive travel journals properly bound and neatly stacked. The latest issues of the dozen or so magazines would be displayed in a special built magazine holder on his drawing room wall.

Here is to dear Rambhai and his often great sense of humor.

Kamala Harris and the notion of Tambram

I started writing about the ludicrous debate whether the Democratic Party’s vice-presidential nominee and Senator Kamala Harris hides or hinders or just hives off her Tambram (Tamil Brahmin) heritage from her mother, Dr. Shyamala Gopalan’s side.

That was a big mistake because my already existing migraine exploded tenfold while writing on this absurd subject.

The idea of Tambram or Tamil Brahmin is being injected into US presidential politics via the agency of the Senator from California. There are already articles making appearances in the mainstream US newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal by Sadanand Dhume who writes that she “…airbrushes her mother's community from her story. The words Tamil and Brahmin don't appear at all.” I do not know that to be a fact but what I do know is that it is embarrassing that we feel the need to narrow down the political discourse to whether a daughter of two immigrants—one from India and one from Jamaica—ought to effusively and insistently talk about her partial heritage in such excruciatingly specific detail which will be most certainly lost on a vast majority of American voters.

Sure, sections of the Indian American community, especially those of Tamil heritage, might pay some passing attention to that aspect of her life but the notion that she has to refer to her Tamil and Brahmin origin is pathetic. Dhume’s piece was clearly mischievously headlined ‘What Kamala Harris Isn't Saying About Her Mother's Background' as if there might be some toxicity or something odd to it that she chooses not to mention it. There is a kicker to the headline which said “Tamil Brahmins like Shyamala Gopalan fled identity politics and socialism for the U.S.” How does Dhume know she fled anything? Perhaps she just came to America like millions of others do—for a better economic opportunity and without even remotely thinking about “identity politics and socialism”. Incidentally, Gopalan was 19 when she came here.

This obsessing over the ever-narrowing definitions of who one is in terms of ethnicity and heritage helps no one other than commentators and columnists under pressure to whip a weekly quota out and get paid. Whether Harris was raised predominantly black in her cultural choices or not by her mother is also a subject of discussion.

I find such discussions damaging in the already deeply damaged social discourse.

Harris’s parents Gopalan and Donald Harris, a retired Stanford economics professor from Jamaica, divorced when she was seven and was raised by her mother. How much more could she be her mother, a “Tambram”, Gopalan’s daughter than what she already is and has repeatedly said she is?  

My migraine is now a throbbing beast inside my head.

Reviewing movie reviews; palindrome is not a palindrome, Tenet is

 

It is a pity that palindrome is not a palindrome. It would read emordnilap if you tried and your spellcheck will go berserk screaming murder.

This opening line has nothing to do with anything I am about to write but as you would discover the post has nothing to do with anything I might want to write. If all this sounds weird, it is.

I am reduced to reviewing reviews of prospective Hollywood blockbusters these days. So I might as well make the best of it. Christopher Nolan’s palindromic spectacle ‘Tenet’ has received diametrically opposite reviews in two respected newspaper reviews—in The New York Times by Jessica Kiang where the movie has been accorded “Critic’s Pick” honor and in The Guardian by Catherine Shoard where it has been called a palindromic dud. Get it? Dud? Palindrome? I am sure you do.

As sheer writing goes, both critics have written their diametrically opposite takes brilliantly. In fact, I tweeted to Jessica Kiang saying this and meaning it sincerely (I still do): “My compliments on an excellent review of 'Tenet'.

"Within the context of this self-created brand of brainiac entertainment, “Tenet” meets all expectations, except the expectation that it will exceed them."

Sharp.

The quoted line is from her review which I found striking.

And then this morning I tweeted this to Catherine Shoard about her particular line which I have quoted.

"And his affectations can be a welcome distraction. But he still just seems like some bloke who’s got drunk in Banana Republic’s scarf department."

Hilarious...hilarious.

I am a compulsive connoisseur of sharp writing irrespective of their substance and have a habit of complimenting people.

With that out of the way, I am struck by how so completely opposite the two reviews are. Nolan, whose last name should have been changed to Nolon just for this movie, might be confused if he reads both of them together which would be like watching this movie, I suppose.

I have not watched it but since I knew that it briefly features Dimple Kapadia as a Mumbai arms dealer I have watched the trailer. I am told you are not supposed to try and understand this genre of Nolan’s movies but just feel them because trying to understand them would elude them. Got it.

I could have guessed that since it is palindromic in its theme and about time-inversion, there would be scenes where what has already happened would cross what is about to happen, which are both the same thing in time-inversion. Or at least that’s what I think. So if you were Tenet, the letter n would be the point at which the time-inversion would collapse like wave function.

By employing such conundrumery (Not a word but coined here in honor of Nolon) the director apparently keeps up his reputation as a filmmaker who baffles the hell out of you.

At some point, I would like to watch the movie on big screen if that is possible any more and also check out Dimple Kapadia. My only apprehension is that I may start singing “Sagar kinare dil yeh pukare, Tu jo nahi to mera koi nahi hai”. Hindi movie aficionados will catch my drift.

As for just the sheer writing quality, both Jessica and Catherine do a superb job of conveying their points of view. Interestingly, I felt their points of view kind of converged in these two observations, the first by Jessica and the other by Catherine.

“Indeed, take away the time-bending gimmick, and “Tenet" is a series of timidly generic set pieces: heists, car chases, bomb disposals, more heists.”

“Some of this is weariness: for all Tenet’s technical ambition, the plot is rote and the furnishings tired. Eastern European heavies lumber about with pliers and meat-cleavers. Clocks literally tick. Synths groan deeply on the soundtrack.”

Republic of Apple

Think about these numbers for a moment.

It took Apple 42 years to acquire a market value of $1 trillion. It took only two years more to become a $2 trillion company and that too the second $1 trillion being notched up in the last 21 weeks.

Apple’s market value is just a shade less than India’s 2019 GDP of 2.94 trillion. That GDP covers 1.4 billion people. Compare that with Apple which employs just 137,000 people.

The company is now the sixth largest economy behind the United States, China, Japan, India, the United Kingdom and France. Tim Cook, the Apple CEO, is like a head of state whose state is in fact the world. Valuation of companies is a dicey business because value does not last too long. Just as rapidly Apple became a $2 trillion company, the first US company to do so, it can equally lose that too. Apple reached that staggering evaluation when its stocks rose 1.2 percent to $467.78 in morning trading on August 19. A case in point of what I am saying being that as recently as March its value fell below $1 trillion in mid-March after the coronavirus crashed economies and companies around the world.

As has been pointed out by those who follow such trends the dramatic spike in Apple evaluation is no thanks to some spectacular innovation in recent times. It has just become a ruthless money-spinner.

It is a measure of how much of a money-spinner it has been that compared to India’s foreign exchange reserves of US$538.191 Billion on 07 August 2020, Apple has $194 billion in cash and bonds.

It is entirely possible that the evaluation could drop tomorrow morning but for now Apple is like a nation, without borders of course, in terms of what it is worth and should perhaps consider applying for a membership of the United Nations. (It’s a joke, people.)

Sitting alone in his office I am sure there are times when Tim Cook wonders to himself, “Really?”

A narrow objection to a ridiculous descriptor about Senator Kamala Harris

With Senator Kamala Harris on the verge of officially becoming the Democratic Party's nominee for vice president and the attendant excitement over who she is ethnically I think what I wrote on January 21, 2019 when she announced her candidacy for presidency bears repeating. The image above is from the New York Times of that period.

January 21, 2019

Senator Kamala Harris’s announcement to run for president in 2020 has struck me for one particularly narrow reason. Quite like The New York Times’s tweet above, which describes her as “one of the most prominent black women”, I am sure others too would use the descriptor in slightly varying versions.

The “black” aspect of her identity comes from her father Donald Harris, an immigrant from Jamaica who is a professor of economics at Stanford University. Her mother Shyamala Gopalan, was a Tamilian from India and a breast cancer specialist. If such details matter at all, she would be biracial although serious scientists would tell you race applies to humans in general not a subset. I will let that pass.

Harris is like former President Barack Obama who too is biracial with a black Kenyan father and white American mother. However, he too has been firmly called America’s first “black” president.

What is common here is the ease with which the media and others use the paternal identity as the predominant, overarching identity to the exclusion of the maternal side. In so much as such narrow definitions matter at all—to me they absolutely do not—it would be useful, even essential, to be accurate because neither Harris nor Obama are just children of their fathers.

If we must live in a politically correct society, how about correcting this ridiculously sexist, not to mention racially exclusionary, descriptor?

I personally think there is absolutely no need to add the candidate’s pigment or lineage or genetic history. The media ought to recognize that as a rule voters have a pair of eyes and they can see. If the media must get hung up on where her skin tone falls within the color spectrum, Harris is not “black” but, as an Indian newspaper matrimonial ad might say, “wheatish” complexioned. As for her heritage, she can be and probably is gloriously eclectic. 

Since she announced her run on the Martin Luther King Day, we might as well judge her not by the color of her skin but the content of her character.

Some observations about Senator Kamala Harris for Vice President

 

#KamalaHarrisForVP @KamalaHarris @JoeBiden Just for the record, this was part of my August 5 broadcast on Suhani Subah on Bharat FM. pic.twitter.com/JojAgRKos8

— Mayank Chhaya, Journalist, Writer, Poet, Painter (@MayankChhaya) August 11, 2020

Admittedly, it was a fanciful thing to say then but immediately after Senator Kamala Harris dropped out of the presidential race on December 3 and once even while she was very much in it I had envisioned a Biden-Harris ticket and said it as much.  On a more serious note, during a broadcast of my morning radio show 'Suhani Subah' (Lovely Morning) on Bharat FM on August 5 I had offered a very short but a very clear precursor to her eventual nomination yesterday by the presumptive Democratic Party president nominee Joe Biden. I tweeted that short audio clip yesterday mainly to gain some cheap vindication because after all that is the only reward for a journalist these days since no one really pays you to be right.

I have been reading some perspectives in mainstream America media about Senator Harris's selection, some of which call it a "safe choice". That is a curious description. I suspect what they perhaps mean is that it is a logical choice from former Vice President Biden's standpoint. It is a logical in the sense that the 55-year-old senator from San Francisco with a mixed cultural heritage, Indian Tamil from her mother Dr. Shyamala Gopalan's side, and Jamaican from her father Professor Donald Harris's side has great potential to bring out a particular demographic turnout in large numbers. By that I mean young African American, Hispanic American and South Asian American voters. 

I would have preferred Senator Harris on top of the ticket but for a country that so abjectly scrambled to the current choice in the White House after pretending it had forever socio-culturally transformed itself during the election of the last incumbent that would have been an inordinately bold move. So it is just as well that we have Biden as the reassuring traditional avuncular presence as the presumptive nominee with Harris as the clear inheritor of a new Democratic Party for the next two to three decades. 

In terms of how the Indian American community might respond the answer is more complicated than it might seem tempting to suggest. It might seem tempting to suggest that the community will wholeheartedly and sanguinely accept her as their choice. That may be misplaced. There is a sizable constituency within the Indian American community that regards President Donald Trump with enthusiasm because they see him as a great supporter of US-India relations generally and Prime Minister Narendra Modi particularly. There is such a strong groundswell of effusion for Prime Minister Modi's sharply right-of-center Hindu brand of politics among Indian Americans that that see President Trump's support for him as the most reassuring factor for them to support the latter. This is notwithstanding the fact the president has been extraordinarily harsh on immigration generally and particularly  the specialty work visas known as H1B of which Indian technology professionals are among the biggest beneficiaries.

Add to that Biden's not necessarily friendly view of India on the contentious issue of Kashmir. A significant number of Indian Americans, who openly side with Prime Minister Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Kashmir, were upset that the former vice president called on the Indian government to “take all necessary steps to restore rights for all the people of Kashmir”, and noted the former vice president was “disappointed by the measures that the government of India has taken with the implementation and aftermath of the National Register of Citizens in Assam and the passage of the Citizenship Amendment Act into law.” The Biden campaign found such measures to be “inconsistent with the country’s long tradition of secularism and with sustaining a multi-ethnic and multi-religious democracy.”

So while there has been some attempt to wax poetic over Kamala Harris's first name which in various Indian language means lotus and which is also the political symbol of the BJP, it is possible that a section of Indian American voters might see the Biden approach to Kashmir as a deal-breaker for them. That may not have a particularly decisive consequence for the electoral prospects of the Biden-Harris ticket since the community is not so large as to swing elections in any significant way.

Beyond these specifics, Senator Harris's selection as a running mate is indeed viewed as extraordinarily important. To the extent that Indians are known to celebrate even the most tenuous of connections to Indian heritage, her selection is clearly resoundingly historic. 

Here is to Dr. Rahat Indori

Dr. Rahat Indori (Image courtesy: http://www.rahatindori.com/) January 1, 1950-- August 11, 2020

Whenever and wherever a poet dies, a little bit of poetry too dies. In the death of Dr. Rahat Indori, perhaps the most quoted and extolled popular poet in India in recent times, the country has lost more than a little bit of poetry though. It has lost the great poetic ferment of a particularly creative mind.

I heard Rahat Indori, who died because of complications arising out of the coronavirus infection at age 70 in Indore today, sporadically in YouTube videos. A poet of some rather frenzied gestures onstage wherever he performed he brought the house down with his unique incantation. And in a way it was incantation of a poetic variety that he used to cast his spell on his audiences around the world.

It turns out Dr. Indori was a painter first who turned a professor and then a poet. Quite clearly, paint colors were not enough to capture his restless creative mind. He needed words and what fabulous and powerful words he produced with such ease.

All poets are self-absorbed. A vast majority of them tends to enjoy their words and voices. However, to watch Indori recite his own works was to experience his internal furnace leaping flames. Here was a poet in supreme command of his craft coopting his audience in his own creative process unlike any of his contemporaries. In a way Dr. Indori’s unbridled joy with himself reminded me of the great Raghupati Sahay Firaq Gorakhpuri. Of course, the two were poet of very different kinds.

By all accounts, he was a prolific and eclectic poet whose facility in capturing the quintessence of the zeitgeist was perhaps unlike any of his contemporaries.

Reading some of his works in the aftermath of his passing, one gets the clear sense that Dr. Indori was a poet who leapt from theme to theme with remarkable swiftness. His writing gives you the impression that his verses were born fully formed and required no alteration. I am not saying that was necessarily the case. I am saying his writing gives you that impression. In the process, he may occasional sound glib but never less than sharply engaging.

Just consider these two verses from a particular ghazal. His reference काग़ज़ का बदन or paper robes is so reminiscent of Ghalib’s कागज़ी है पैरहन from नक्श फरियादी है.

ये हवाएँ उड़ न जाएँ ले के काग़ज़ का बदन

दोस्तो मुझ पर कोई पत्थर ज़रा भारी रखो

ले तो आए शाइरी बाज़ार में 'राहत' मियाँ

क्या ज़रूरी है कि लहजे को भी बाज़ारी रखो

Notwithstanding the occasional feeling of glibness Dr. Indori’s extraordinary command over his poetic art was never in doubt and never scarce. Consider this verse that is perhaps appropriate to recall on his death.

मौत लम्हे की सदा ज़िंदगी उम्रों की पुकार

मैं यही सोच के ज़िंदा हूँ कि मर जाना है

Please remember that the poetic glibness that I talk about his not a critique but an acknowledgement of his natural gifts as a poet.

Two verses were born in me in rapid succession on hearing Dr. Indori’s passing. I present them both.

आलम को कुछ तो राहत होगी तुम्हारे शेरों की याद से

ज़माना कुछ तो बदला होगा तुम्हारी मुसलसल फरियाद से

मुसलसल—Constant आलम—The world in this context

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आप से फ़ुर्सत मिले तो आप को सुनूँ

वैसे मैं कितनों के संताप को सुनूँ

संताप--Annoyance

#CarrolBoardDilemma

This morning I am grappling with a profound existential dilemma. Should I store away my carrom board or should I sell/junk it?

One confronts such harrowing choices but once in a lifetime. Looking at the carrom board it struck me how the game resembles life in some ways. We are like the coins on the board and life is like the striker. We don’t know when and where it might hit and push it in which direction and eventually which hole. The eventual destiny is to be struck your way into a hole.

On that matter-of-fact note I conclude today’s sermon titled #CarromBoardDilemma.

मैं आज भी फैंकी हुई पेन्सिल्स उठाता हूँ

I did not grow up relatively poor in the Ahmedabad of the 1960s because every family that we knew of in various neighborhoods was relatively poor. We did not know any better. We did not have the right contrast. Economically, we were lower middle class on the precipice of being middle class, which happened decades later. Culturally, we were at top of the totem pole in terms of being exposed to books, music, language and unimpeachable integrity and values. We knew far more about the world than those in our economic stratum might be expected to know. We were also far better read than most we knew of.

I use this quick background to tell you a short personal story. As I move home, yet again, an almost reflexive childhood habit refuses to go. While packing up the house and storing the household goods away and cleaning, I often come across pencils and pens under a bed here or a sofa there. Even today, I pick up every one of those pencils and pens and rehabilitate them. That stems from a sense of childhood scarcity where pencils were used past the lowest stub of their lead and wood. Sometimes, I suspect we wrote using our index finger because of the remnant of the lead on it. (Literary exaggeration.) Pencils were not necessarily expensive of themselves but they were to us as a family. We were not unique in our scarcity. Like I said entire neighborhoods were full of families that did the same thing.

This morning I picked up half a dozen pencils and packed them away which is rather silly but as I said it is a reflex action. It is like a muscle memory. Pencils with an eraser were a rare possession in my childhood. They were guarded with excruciating care. We used to call an eraser a rubber which here in America used to be a euphemism for a condom. Come to think of it, they both erase, one words and the other conception.

While picking up those pencils this morning, I was reminded of the famous line from the movie Deewar where Amitabh Bachchan says, “मैं आज भी फैंके हुए पैसे नहीं उठाता.” (Even today, I do not pick up money flung at me.)

Mine is reverse. “मैं आज भी फैंकी हुई पेन्सिल्स उठाता हूँ.”