Mayank Chhaya Daily

Pathetic

Watching two men in their 70s verbal-jousting for 90 minutes over nothing in particular and everything in general calling each other names would be good entertainment but for the fact that one of them is already a president and other badly wants to be one.

Pathetic was the word that came to my mind several times watching Donald Trump and Joe Biden going at each other last night. If you edit Biden’s smackdowns cleverly, you can come up with “Shut up, you clown”. If you do the same with Trump, you can come up with “You are the liar who graduated last in the class.”

Of the two, Biden at least made an effort to keep it civil and substantive other than calling Trump a clown and the worst president US history. I am confused. If Trump is a clown, aren’t standards of competence different for him from what they would be if he were the worst president in US history?

The much-flung charge at Biden by Trump of being a “sleepy Joe” was jolted from its root last night since it was Biden who seemed to be fully awake and woke. In contrast, Trump looked a pale shadow of his even paler shadow. But even as a pale shadow he managed to say many obnoxious things, including not saying obnoxious things about white supremacists.

In a sense the debate last night is a fitting illustration of one of the worst years in world history.

You might have noticed that the regularity of my posts as well as their intensity is distinctly waning. I seem to have checked out.

Of President Trump's tax paying habits

Will the epic New York Times expose of President Donald Trump’s malignant tax habits undo his prospects this November 3?

The short answer is No.

No is also the long answer.

Trump’s followers see all his transgressions as a highly commendable up-yours to the entrenched system that many of them too would like to say had they had the kind of money that the president does not have.

If nothing else the president proves that in order to have a hell of a lot of money, the primary requisite is that you don’t have it. You just say you have it in many different ways and the notion sticks. Otherwise explain these details from the Times report.

He declared both earnings of $434 million in 2018 presidential public annual financial disclosure but in the same period claimed losses of $47.7 to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for the same period. He has outstanding loans of $421 million on top of a potential $100 million owed to the IRS. That $100 million is supposed to be $72.9 million in tax refund Trump claimed and was awarded for the period 2005 and 2008 but which is now the subject of a decade-long audit battle with the IRS.

Then there is $315 million reported “lost” by Trump’s golf courses since 2000. It appears someone just shanked it. I am no golfer and have never been to a golf course and could not care less. Hence I can use shank which is considered ill-mannered by golf players.

That the president paid just $750 in income tax for the year he won the presidency and the one after that should tell you all that you need to know. If I were Joe Biden, I will carry a check for $1500 for tomorrow’s presidential debate and offer to pay him.

Let September 26 be called Flamboyance Day

Johnny by MC

Republishing something I wrote a while ago.

I first met Dev Anand in 1984, when he was 61, which in Dev Anand years would be early 20s.

He wore a blue gabardine shirt and black corduroy trousers. A flaming orange scarf was wrapped around his neck. He stood in the doorway to his Navketan office in Khira Estate, Santa Cruz, with hands akimbo, mouth breaking into his signature toothless smile, and said, “You are young, Mayank.” For the record I was 23. It sounded as if he was relieved that I was young.

Before that first meeting I had spoken to him a couple of times on the phone, one of which had such a refreshing Dev Anand whimsy attached to it. Sikh separatist leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale had just been killed in Operation Blue Star and I was seeking reactions from prominent figures of Bombay. Dev Anand was one of them.

I called his residence Iris Park in Juhu. The first call was answered by an aide of his who said something which could mean any number of things in the context of a Hindi movie star except what it really means. The aide said, “Sahab, abhi bathroom mein hein aur ready ho rahen hein.” (He is in the bathroom and getting ready).

Since I was on a deadline, I called again five minutes later. This time another man answered with a distinctively stretched hello that sounded like “haloooo.” Perhaps half of India would have recognized that voice instantly. It was Dev Anand and my first ever conversation with him. I could hear some water flowing in the background. I told him who I was and explained the purpose of my call.

“Mayank, can I call you back in 15 minutes? I am in my shower,” he said and actually held the receiver close to the showerhead to prove that he was telling the truth. He told me to leave my number with his aide. That is another thing with movie stars. They generally do not return your calls. That’s just their way of saying that they would never call you back.

Some 20 minutes later I received a call from Dev Anand. He gave me a brief reaction and ended the call saying, “Let’s meet sometime.”

We met several times over the next quarter century or so, the last being on my last visit to Mumbai last year. There are so many stories to tell which I would do over the course of the next few days. For today, one particular bit from my first interview with him is instructive because it speaks so eloquently to his character.

We spent nearly two hours together in his rather charmingly unkempt office, but he did not sit down even for a moment. Barely third year into my career as a journalist, I considered it very becoming of me to ask insolent questions, one of which was, “Mr. Anand, what do you have more—talent or enthusiasm?”

The impudence of the question was not lost on someone who had already been an iconic movie star for close to four decades by the time I posed it. The only sign that this otherwise remarkably classy gentleman was discomfited by my effrontery was evident in the way he took two brisk rounds of his desk and said, “I am as talented as anybody else.”

It is entirely a measure of Mr. Anand’s character that he did not let my first encounter with him stand in the way of what turned out to be a long friendship.

The first interview also tried to dwell on themes that I thought other journalists, mostly specializing in Hindi movies (I was a general hard news reporter), were not at all curious about. Flamboyance was Dev Anand’s default temperament and I saw an opening there. Since by that time it was more a conversation than an interview I said something to this effect. “It would seem that you use your flamboyance as a shield to keep most of the world out. They are so taken in by your flamboyance and charisma that they do not bother to look beyond it.”

He had a fountain pen in his mouth as he looked at me and then through me. He then drummed his desk with the pen as if harmonizing what he was about to say and then said, “That is an unusual question and unusual theory. But I am not going to discuss that.”

Another question I remember distinctly was about his views on friendship. His reply, “Everybody is a buddy but then nobody is.”

P.S.: In 2001, as the founder-owner of a now defunct California based publishing house I almost commissioned Dev Anand to write his autobiography. We had even drawn up the basic contract but it did not work out because, in his words, “It is too early look back.” He was 78 then.

Pay attention, people

The “Oh, that is just Trump being Trump” as an extenuation to explain away reflexively egregious conduct never worked for me. Under the current circumstances it works even less.

Watching an exchange between President Trump and Brian Karem, senior White House reporter for Playboy, at a news conference yesterday was yet another jolt for those who bought into that sorry explanation.

Karem asked the president, “Will you commit to making sure that there is a peaceful transferal of power after the elections?”

To which the president replied, “Well, we are going to see what happens. You know that I have been complaining very strongly about the ballots, and the ballots are a disaster.”

When Karem persisted with the same question, Trump said, “We want to get rid of the ballots, and you’ll have a very peaceful …there won’t be a transfer, frankly. There’ll be a continuation. The ballots are out of control. You know it and you know who knows it better than anybody else? The Democrats know it better than anybody else.”

Couple this with the latest reporting by The Atlantic that the Trump campaign is considering radical measures to bypass election results and you begin to get a sense of how low and how quickly the state of affairs has fallen.

Writing the Atlantic story, Barton Gellman says, “The danger is not merely that the 2020 election will bring discord. Those who fear something worse take turbulence and controversy for granted. The coronavirus pandemic, a reckless incumbent, a deluge of mail-in ballots, a vandalized Postal Service, a resurgent effort to suppress votes, and a trainload of lawsuits are bearing down on the nation’s creaky electoral machinery.”

To his credit, if that’s the right word, the president has been consistent about his contempt for various institutions from the get-go. There was an interview he did with Chris Wallace of Fox News earlier in the summer where he was asked if he would accept the election results. President Trump said, "I have to see. Look, you—I have to see. No, I'm not going to just say yes. I'm not going to say no, and I didn't last time, either."

It all boils down to one simple point—the election result will be fair only if it elects him. Everything else is bogus. Think about that for a moment or three.

My personal approach to my own life and life generally has been of lofty philosophical detachment but even I recognize the utter rot that has set in here so quickly.

On Hindi Diwas

This is coming from someone who has been a passionate admirer, promoter and practitioner of Hindi for decades. In fact, I was the first one to start an entire Hindi literary portal in 2000 along with one for Spanish and one for English. The plan was to add all languages eventually but money upended it.

भारत में और भी भाषाएँ हैं. उनका भी तो अपना अपना दिवस हो.

यह क्या बात हुई की एक भाषा और बाकी सब तालियाँ बजाएं. 

The other day I was invited to a webinar about Hindi. When I mentioned purely as a matter of fact that my mother tongue is Gujarati, one panelist had the temerity to tell me "आप को हिंदी गर्व से बोलनी चाहिए."

मैंने कहा, "मैं जो भी भाषा बोलता हूँ बस बोलता हूँ. उस में गर्व की बात नहीं है. आप क्यूँ न सिर्फ एक वाक्य गुजराती में बोल के दिखाइए."

It is this petty linguistic chauvinism that irritates me; this morphing of a broad cultural India into a narrow Hindi India.

Hindi is a truly great language but it is not India. India is all its languages and dialects.

Clusterfuck of carbon dioxide

Two stories underline the clusterfuck of carbon dioxide being unleashed in our atmosphere as a result of climate change and global warming. One is, of course, the raging wildfires in California, Oregon and Washington and the other, which are far more consequential, are the wildfires that have erupted through the Arctic Circle.

Reading a story about the Arctic wildfires in Nature offers a sobering reminder how forces of nature from a variety of sources could upend civilization as we know it. “Wildfires blazed along the Arctic Circle this summer, incinerating tundra, blanketing Siberian cities in smoke and capping the second extraordinary fire season in a row. By the time the fire season waned at the end of last month, the blazes had emitted a record 244 megatonnes of carbon dioxide — that’s 35% more than last year, which also set records. One culprit, scientists say, could be peatlands that are burning as the top of the world melts,” Nature’s Alexandra Witze reports.

“Peatlands are carbon-rich soils that accumulate as waterlogged plants slowly decay, sometimes over thousands of years. They are the most carbon-dense ecosystems on Earth; a typical northern peatland packs in roughly ten times as much carbon as a boreal forest. When peat burns, it releases its ancient carbon to the atmosphere, adding to the heat-trapping gases that cause climate change,” the story says.

This vicious carbon cycle poses a serious existential threat. The carbon stored in the Arctic peatlands constitutes nearly 50% of the global amount. As global warming thaws the Arctic peatlands, the carbon in the atmosphere will increase which in turn will trap more heat from the sun and then the loop continues. Climate scientists are describing this as “alarming” even though the word has lost much of its sting.

I strongly recommend you read the Nature story in full to understand how Earth makes no concession once a damaging process has begun. It will reach its logical conclusion even if it means wiping some of us out. Earth, like the universe, owes us sentient beings nothing. They are not obliged to mollycoddle us. Everything eventually is incidental to Nature’s forces which do what they do without any particular regard for the damage they might cause. Remember that.

Vinoba Bhave In The Time Of Land Acquisition

Vinoba Bhave

Vinoba by MC

Today marks the 125th birth anniversary of Vinoba Bhave. To commemorate, I republish a post I wrote on March 18, 2015. 

March 18, 2015

Vinoba Bhave (September 11,1895-November 15, 1982) is a very prominent presence at the Gandhi Ashram here in Ahmedabad. With the current political ferment in New Delhi over the Narendra Modi government’s land acquisition policy, where farmers’ consent to their lands being acquired is the main bone of contention, Bhave’s life seems fictional.

While waiting for the shoot to be set up at the Ashram yesterday for my interview with Dr. Tridip Shurud, a well-known Gandhi and Narsinh Mehta scholar, who also happens to be the director of the Sabarmati Ashram Preservation and Memorial Trust, I began thinking about Bhave.

Arguably one of Gandhi’s most consequential followers, Vinoba was an extraordinary figure whose was, in many ways, a uniquely Indian story. He set out for a life as a Himalayan hermit. As part of that quest his first stop was Varanasi in early 1916. Newspapers then there were full of reports about a man called Mohandas Gandhi and his defining speech at the newly founded Benaras Hindu University. He sought a meeting with Gandhi and subsequently met him in June of that year. That changed his life and put him firmly on a lifelong mission to perfect non-violence as a tool for social transformation.

His chosen tool of transformation through non-violence was ‘Bhoodan’ (Bhoo meaning land and dan meaning donate) or land gift. The idea was exquisitely simple yet enormously difficult. Using the power of his personal morality, mass public contact and the essential goodness of people’s hearts he would make the landed voluntarily gift tracts of land for the landless millions of Indians. Vinoba believed that along with air and water land too was a natural human right. But he also knew that it was far more difficult to part with than the other two.

During a meeting with the disenfranchised and landless people of the village of Pochampalli in Andhra Pradesh he found out that barely 80 acres of land could change their lives. He did not know how to get them the 80 acres. It was then that a local landowner, Ram Chandra Reddy said he could gift 100 acres. That set the stage for what turned out to be a remarkable movement. Starting September 12, 1951 he walked thousands of miles throughout India for 13 years exhorting large landowners to donate pieces of land for the landless across the country.

According to Bhave’s official website over 4.1 million acres of land were gifted as part of his Bhoodan movement. The actual land distributed was about 1.2 million acres with over 1.8 million acres being found unfit. The remainder was perhaps never donated. Even if it was just 1.2 million acres of land, it is quite an accomplishment for a frail, barely clad, man to walk the lengths and breadths of the country and getting people to donate something for which massive wars have been fought.

At a time when the country is discussing fair ways to acquire land from farmers for infrastructural development, Bhave’s is an exceptional story. To me it is also strikingly cinematic and not in the least because of his unusual presence. It is a great movie waiting to be made.

It is not as if I have forgotten my mother, Zini

याद तो उन्हें करें जिन्हें भूले हों--MC

It is not as if I have forgotten my mother, Zini. It is just that I don’t say often enough that I remember her.

This morning I want to say I do remember her a great deal. It is quite remarkable that with so many of Snehlata’s (that’s her name) memories, there is a song attached. Many of these songs are free floating appendages not specific to any situational memory.

For instance, there was a song that Zini (that’s her affectionate name) sang for no particular reason. That is something I have inherited from her unlike any of my three siblings, one of whom, Trilochan, is no more.

That song, I started singing this morning for no reason at all and that triggered mother’s memory.

It is from the 1960 movie Ghunghat written wonderfully by Shakeel Badayuni and composed superbly by Ravi. I find that these days so many songs that I randomly recall turn out to have been composed by Ravi.

Mother sang the song immortalized by the inevitable Lata Mangeshkar rather week. Zini had a much deeper voice and I remember she used to sang it in a lower octave. So here is to Zini again.

 

Whoa! Is all I can say

When the universe was a little more half its current age, which would be seven billion years ago, a gravitational shockwave left two colliding black holes. The collision or merger produced an entity with a mass 142 times that of our Sun. One solar mass is 1.989 multiplied by 10 followed by 30 zeroes kilograms or 330,000 times the mass of Earth.

On May 21, 2019, that gravitational shockwave from that particular collision reached Earth after traveling 150 billion trillion km.

Are you still there? I ask because the scale is so beyond comprehension.

If you are into trivial earthly matters, this may not interest you at all. It does me because, well, it just does. It is a great escape from the drudgery of existence. It does not alter my life in any everyday sense other than reassuring me yet again everything is just futile.

I do not know what I can do with that information other than just marveling ceaselessly at the scale of the universe. Think about the fact that the gravitational wave left 2.5 billion years before even our solar system, therefore us, were even in existence. Who would have thought that such a staggering time lapse later there would be a planet like Earth on which there would be life which would evolve into us, among whom there would be a group of people called scientists who would construct a detector called the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) which would detect this particular signal?

Whoa! Is all I can say.

Revisiting Richard Gere at 71

Richard Gere

Actor Richard Gere turned 71 yesterday, which for a Buddhist like him and unbeliever like me means nothing in particular. However, for the purposes of this blog it is as good an excuse as any to carry an old interview of mine with the Hollywood A-lister. I met Gere in McLeod Ganj in Himachal Pradesh in India in April, 1996. The interview took place in ‘Kashmir Cottage’, the home of the Dalai Lama’s younger brother. I remember it to be a crisp Himalayan morning with endless miles of mountains shrouded in what seemed like a velvety blue-green cloak of pine trees. Gere was amiability itself. My (now former) wife Kesumi happened to be with me during the meeting. I introduced her and got on with the conversation.

Next day, as Kesumi and I went loafing around in McLeod Ganj, we bumped into Gere. An effusive greeting later, Gere turned to Kesumi and said in mock seriousness and fully feigned dreaminess, “We can’t keep meeting like this.” A laughter was had by all three before moving on. Here is the interview in its original Q and A format. Those interested in getting involved or contributing to The Gere Foundation, visit here.

I have not carried any picture of Gere because I have not bought any. In any case, many of us know what he looks like.

April 26,1996

By Mayank Chhaya

McLEOD GANJ —

In the two-street bazaar of this Himalayan hamlet chances are that Hollywood star Richard Gere would walk past you unobtrusively.

Gere, who is among the most high profile supporters of Tibet and a keen student of Tibetan Buddhism, visits here every year for about three weeks to continue with his “learning of the soul.” Since his first meeting with the Dalai Lama in 1982, he has become the most vocal Hollywood campaigner against the Chinese “repression and genocide” in Tibet and “systematic annihilation”of its people and culture. He holds forth on Tibet and Tibetans passionately and upholds India as their “best friend” in the world.

Gere spoke to India Abroad in an interview at Kashmir Cottage, the residence of the Dalai Lama’s brother overlooking endless miles of pine trees.

Excerpts from the interview:

Q. What is it that attracts you to Buddhism?

A. Its fearlessness. You are not afraid of questioning anything in Buddhism. Most philosophical systems start with a series of givens and build an argument on that. In Buddhism there are no givens. That is the only way you can find the root ground of consciousness. It is a very practical system which is emotionally and intellectually sound. It speaks to all ages. It speaks the basic truth about the mind.

Q. Why do you espouse Tibet’s cause?

A. It is a valid cause. They are people who need friends. There are very few people who stand up for the Tibetans. The movement has been nonviolent. I think all nonviolent movements should be supported in all possible ways. There is repression and genocide taking place there. Those who have access to the media should talk about it.

Q. What happened when you first met the Dalai Lama?

A. That was in 1982 in Dharamsala. I had been a student of Zen Buddhism before that. I did not know much about Tibetan forms at all. I was very nervous about meeting him. But he made me feel comfortable at once. That is the sign of a great and humble man.

He introduced himself as an ordinary human being and nothing else. He did not know who I was, but his brother had told him I was an actor. He asked me when I act angry in movies, do I actually feel angry or when I act crying do I actually cry. Then he told me that the illusory nature of the emotions that an actor has are almost identical to the illusory emotions that a normal person has. He said when I fake anger as an actor it is no different from a normal person. I know it is a performance and you don’t. That fascinated me.

Q. Being a man of prominence and perhaps political influence, what is that you can do to make the U.S. see China in a different light on the issue of Tibet? Trade seems to tower above everything in Indo-China relations.

A. I can be the conscience. I can’t change the U.S. government’s economic policy, but I can certainly speak for the human rights community.

Q. Do you think there has been a difference in the way Tibet is perceived internationally with people like you championing it?

A. No, I don’t think so. It is not us but the person of His Holiness that changes people’s minds. Every time we have facilitated His Holiness’s meeting with anyone, there is a change in people’s minds. He is the key. When you know you are in the presence of a great man, a great mind and a great soul, you can’t help but be touched and influenced. Surely economic interests are far too important, but even with the fact that the U.S. has nothing to gain by helping Tibet there have been far- reaching pronouncements in Congress, including the one which said that it is the sense of Congress that Tibet is an occupied territory. I don’t think India would say that.

Q. India has a Tibetan government in exile on its soil.

A. That is very kind, but I don’t think India is going to make a political statement like that. Of course, Tibet has no better friends than India. Sure, India is not going to go to war with China over Tibet. I would not expect India to and I am sure His Holiness would not either. India has been incredibly kind to the Tibetans. One of the reasons why Tibetans have such a successful community in exile is because India and the Indian people have made it easier for them to get land, schools and various other support systems that are so crucial.

Q. Is there any realistic time frame in which one can expect an early resolution of the Tibetan issue?

A. I don’t think there is a realistic timetable. When you are playing with combustible situations in China, especially now, no one knows what is going to happen. I suppose it is as combustible now as Eastern Europe was, and as spontaneous and all inclusive too. No one had any idea that everything would fall apart in one year. It is possible in China too.

Unfortunately, China has seen what happened in Eastern Europe and Russia and has guarded their situations very carefully. The military presence in Tibet is extremely high. The control of information is extremely tight. I can’t go to Tibet any more. I can’t even transit through Beijing. Just because I am a friend of Tibet’s.

Now am I calling for the violent overthrow of any country? Of course not. I speak the truth and am involved with any human rights group or any group that is looking for justice.

Q. Kashmiris claim they are fighting for a similar cause.

A. I am not very educated about that, but Kashmir was not invaded. Tibet was. Tibet has been occupied by a massive occupation force for 40 years. That is a big difference (between Kashmir and Tibet). Another thing that does not make the analogy correct is there has been a systematic annihilation of the Tibetan people and their culture, which I don’t believe happens in Kashmir. There has been a massive population transfer which I don’t think has happened in Kashmir.

Q. Has the experience of Buddhism changed you as an actor for better or worse?

A. I am not interested in better or worse, but it has fundamentally changed everything. If you fundamentally change your mind and heart everything changes.

Q. Do your Hollywood colleagues ask you what you are doing in a place like Dharamsala?

A. They accept it. I have had many receptions for friends in America and everyone is very touched and changed after meeting with His Holiness.

Q. Does the Dalai Lama ask you to push Tibet’s cause even more?

A. We talk about it constantly. We talk about what is a good strategy that would help the cause. We discuss specific things too. For instance, I am going to speak at a human rights conference on Tibet. His Holiness would tell me about perhaps emphasizing something and de-emphasizing some other things.

Q. Do you see a more formal role for yourself in the movement for Tibet?

A. I am not planning anything. Whatever happens, happens. In the kind of job that I have (as an actor) it is very hard to plan anything. My life has been a little chaotic that way. I haven’t had the luxury of being a householder.

Q. Is your Hollywood career on or do you want to leave it to concentrate on Buddhism and Tibet?

A. I have to go back to America because my last movie is opening in April. For me right now my career is not that important, but then it affords me to help a lot people on many levels, on a financial level, on influence level, political or psychic levels, because of the position that I have as an actor. So in many ways it would be foolish for me to turn my back on that because it can potentially cause some good. Maybe later in life, but for now it is alright.