Mayank Chhaya Daily

Bluetooth button cell battery and cheap narcissism

This picture underscores the theme of the post. Two cameras were used to create this selfie. (At least, it has the virtue of being creatively inventive.)

Warning: This post contains some literary exaggeration.

One has reached the most vulgar level of cheap narcissism when one rues the end of the Bluetooth selfie remote's button cell battery.

I have reached that level.

 

This morning the remote's cell has run out. The green light blinks for a second then goes off. In that dying cell I see the last gasps of my self-absorption. I have been rummaging through various drawers like a frenzied junkie to find that one button cell battery to bring alive the remote. No luck yet. I am feeling withdrawal symptoms, which include blank-staring at my phone even though I can switch on the phone's camera with just one finger. I feel deprived. I told you it is vulgar.

 

This set me thinking how we now confront such 21st century problems. First we have mobile phones, then mobile phones with camera and then mobile phone with camera that switch views between front and back. Then there are selfie sticks. Add to those a Bluetooth remote with button cell battery to sync it with the phone. And finally, we take our video or photograph to post it on social media to garner some likes. I do it excessively and don't find it worrisome. That is worrisome.

 

There was a time when mirrors were the precursors to phone cameras. However, mirrors did not offer a shared experience, generally speaking. After all how many people could you gather in your bathroom or bedroom and pose in front of the mirror to earn some applause? Not many. And if it was just about posing, why would you need a mirror? You could do it directly in front of a group of people.

 

Compact mirrors can be and are carried in one's purse, of course, but they have mostly remained the domain of women. Perhaps there are men who also carry compact mirrors but I do not personally know anyone. In any case, phone cameras offer that facility as well. 

 

I learned very early on that while taking selfies, either stills or videos, one should hold the phone higher than one's head in order not to show nostrils. Nostrils are never a pretty sight on almost anyone. I have seen some people, particularly, whose nostrils are a work of art but by and large they are an eyesore. Unfortunately, I am all nostrils. So even when I hold the phone camera right above my head they still show up. (Literary exaggeration.)

 

Coming back to button cell battery, I have not been able to find one as of writing this blog. I can always buy one but that costs money and who has that? I made the mistake of thinking that narcissism, even the cheap kind, pays. It does not. 

 

 

The thrill of watching a spacecraft hitting an asteroid

Dimorphos moonlet as captured by NASA's DART mission

A probe the size of a vending machine crashed itself on an asteroid seven million miles (11 million kilometers) from Earth with a precision of about 17 meters  after traveling some 470 million miles over a period of ten months. If this does not blow your mind, get it checked.

NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) , the world’s first planetary defense technology demonstration, hit the asteroid named Diphormos in order to throw it off its course or deflect it as a precursor to preempting any possible direct asteroid strike on Earth. The scientific logic of the operation being that even a slight nudge has the potential to make an asteroid miss Earth by a safe distance. It is a technique known as kinetic impact. 

Watching the DART impact live yesterday was a thrill, particularly when one factored in the amount of engineering,  metallurgy, orbital calculations, trajectory, automatic navigation system, remote command, and numerous other details that went into the mission.  All this work to finally hit the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos, a small body just 530 feet (160 meters) in diameter. It orbits a larger, 2,560-foot (780-meter) asteroid called Didymos. Neither asteroid poses a threat to Earth but they made for an ideal target to test the technology.

“Planetary Defense is a globally unifying effort that affects everyone living on Earth,” Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, was quoted as saying in an official statement. “Now we know we can aim a spacecraft with the precision needed to impact even a small body in space. Just a small change in its speed is all we need to make a significant difference in the path an asteroid travels.”

A NASA statement said, "The spacecraft’s sole instrument, the Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical navigation (DRACO), together with a sophisticated guidance, navigation and control system that works in tandem with Small-body Maneuvering Autonomous Real Time Navigation (SMART Nav) algorithms, enabled DART to identify and distinguish between the two asteroids, targeting the smaller body.

These systems guided the 1,260-pound (570-kilogram) box-shaped spacecraft through the final 56,000 miles (90,000 kilometers) of space into Dimorphos, intentionally crashing into it at roughly 14,000 miles (22,530 kilometers) per hour to slightly slow the asteroid’s orbital speed. DRACO’s final images, obtained by the spacecraft seconds before impact, revealed the surface of Dimorphos in close-up detail."

To think that a spacecraft traveling that fast on its own using its smart navigation to identify the right body between the binary system, lock on it precisely and then hit it with such accuracy is to feel overwhelmed by the brilliance of the systems and those who designed and guided it.

 

"Everybody is a buddy and nobody is"

'Johnny'--Mayank Chhaya

Over the years I have written a few short pieces about Dev Anand, whom I knew for some 26 years from 1985, when I was 24 and him, 62, until 2011, when he died at 88. I hesitate to call it a friendship because I generally hesitate to call any acquaintance, now matter how old, a friendship. I would go to the extent of saying only this. If I called him, he would answer and know me instantly. That's that.

Today happens to be Mr. Anand's (Maayaaank, Call me Dev, is how he would correct me) 99th birth anniversary. Since I have mentioned the subject of friendship, I want to recall a couple of questions I had asked him during my very first interview in 1985.

"Who are your closest friends now?" I asked him. 

He smiled as his iconic smile, thought a bit as if he was on the verge of some profound wisdom and then said, "Everybody is a buddy and nobody is."

It was an unexpectedly profound response. I told him as much. He smiled again and then quickly put a thick marker between his lips as if he was about to start smoking it. I could tell that he was quite pleased with his reply and deservedly so. 

My next question, observation really, threw him off a bit.

"It would seem to me that you use your flamboyance to hide the real you," I said. (For the record, from my early teens I have been accustomed to using language in a certain way that might seem pompous.)

Mr. Anand looked at me but was in fact, looking past me as he pondered a response. It was after several moments that he stretched out his hand and shook hands with me. It was not a signal to end of our interaction but as a sort of acknowledgement that my observation had substance to it which he did not like to dwell on.

We continued to talking for an hour and half after that. 

Some silver linings have clouds underneath

I am a reflexive poet and a compulsive visualizer. When the two combine, which they often do and as they did this morning, this happens.

When I saw this tree with its head turning yellow heralding the onset of fall, this line was immaculately born in my mind.

पैड़ों के सर पीले हो रहे हैं

पतझड़ दबे पाँव आ रही है

Heads of trees are turning yellow

Fall is tiptoeing around

Immediately after that I saw these clouds and these verses were born instantly both in Hindi and English like fraternal literary twins.

कुछ बादल पर चांदी सी सीवन होती है

या युंह कहिए हर सीवन के नीचे बादल होते हैं

Some clouds have silver linings

Or some silver linings have clouds underneath

--Mayank Chhaya

Proclaiming the Royal Farters' League or RoFL

Royal Proclamation

This morning, as one of my many flunkies ironed my shoelaces and another picked up a pen I had just dropped, I experienced a Eureka moment.

I have always believed that farting is a waste of not just royal time but royal energy as well. There are so many royal minders who do nothing other than stand around, harrumphing. So why not outsource all my farting functions to some of them?

Accordingly, I am announcing the formation of the Royal Farters’ League or RoFL whose sole task would be to channel my gaseous emanations through their bodies.

RoFL members will be trained in how to sense that I am in need of an emanation. Given how quickly and unexpectedly emanations happen, I will need a dozen RoFL members for every six hours who are so sharply attuned to my subtle physiognomic changes that precede such emanations. For most people, it is impossible to tell whether it is my resting hissy face or it is contorted by an impending emanation.

The RoFL will be a 50-member team, two being standbys in case someone in the 48 on duty can no longer produce gas on my behalf. The RoFL members will have to sign a binding agreement that they can no longer fart themselves as long as they are in royal employ. 

On a separate matter, I will no longer subject myself to the use of leaky fountain pens. The royal blue ink stains on my fingers confuse me whether I am bleeding.

So, Tucker Carlson, bugger off

I do not mean to be abusive but it is no breaking news that Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson is a flaming jerk. Also, that he is an overflowing douchebag above which horseflies buzz around. Did I tell you that he is also a leaky ignoramus? However, like I said, I do not mean to be abusive.

By now many of you might know that on his show he said this about India: "When the British pulled out of India, they left behind an entire civilisation, a language, a legal system, schools, churches and public buildings, all of which are still in use today.” His comments came in the context of the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

No one should be surprised at Carlson’s virulent ignorance since he works at Fox News. It is a job and ratings requirement there. I am told when you interview for a position at Fox News the most important question that is asked of you is, “How little do you know about everything?” It is mandatory for all evening hosts on the network to say before every show that opinion is knowledge.

It is not worth enlightening the likes of Carlson about India's unrivaled linguistic, philosophical, cultural, musical, artistic, scientific and civilizational excellence. I think it is better to let colonial wannabes like Carlson stew in their fetid benightedness.

Let me cite just one philosophical construct by Gautam Buddha and watch the Carlsons of the world squirm in incomprehension. Remember this was conceived over 2500 years ago.

“That being present, this becomes; from the arising of that, this arises. That being absent, this does not become; from the cessation of that, this ceases.”

So, Tucker Carlson, bugger off.

Arvind Kejriwal : the Manmohan Desai of Indian politics

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal in Ahmedabad (Photo: Screengrab from the Aam Aadmi Party's YouTube channel)

I have generally regarded politics as a gladiatorial sport; now more so than ever before. The latest gladiator charging the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) smug certitudes is Delhi Chief Minister and founder of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Arvind Kejriwal.

Kejriwal is the first major politician not only to emerge in my long absence from India but someone whom I have had to observe from afar, a little over 12,000 kilometers to be precise. It is an interesting view.

The first thing that strikes me is that he is perhaps the first politician that I know of whose grandstanding is at such street, microlevels. Kejriwal’s grandiosity can come across as infuriatingly small to many. I am conscious that grandiosity by its very definition cannot be small but he has managed to do so.

I was watching his address in Ahmedabad, my hometown, to an audience that prominently featured the city’s autorickshaw drivers. I am discovering that Kejriwal enjoys a great deal of affection among the autorickshaw drivers of Delhi and Punjab. To those he is rapidly adding, it seems, those from Gujarat. The audience was in Kejriwal’s thrall, especially the rickshaw drivers. It is a constituency that traditionally does not get seen, let alone acknowledged. In terms of numbers, it is nowhere big enough to be electorally consequential but in their ability as carriers of societal angst and aspirations rikshawallahs are extraordinarily effective.

The filmmaker Manmohan Desai once told me that he regarded Bombay’s rickshaw drivers as his ultimate focus group and arbiters. “Rikshawaleh ko picture pasand aayi maney samjho ke picture hit hai. (If a rickshaw driver likes a movie, then assume that the movie is a hit),” he told me. In a sense, Arvind Kejriwal is the Manmohan Desai of Indian politics. He too sells theater of the absurd with such gusto that for a short while people believe him.

I have no firsthand experience from the ground but it would seem to me that he is not all-fibbing when it comes to his accomplishments in Delhi. He does seem to have done well in some areas of Delhi’s governance, especially in transforming public schools and government-run hospitals. I caveat it again to say that this is not my firsthand assessment.

Another thing that strikes me about Kejriwal is that he infuriates his antagonists as much as Prime Minister Narendra Modi does his. He gets as much under the skin of Modi camp-followers as Modi does his. One cannot stand the other. Both excel at lacing their grandstanding with promises which are just that—promises. Both would insist they mean what they say and say what they do. Once again, I am not on the ground to make an informed assessment as a professional journalist. However, going by how the rival constituencies of Modi and Kejriwal have nothing but visceral, unvarnished contempt for the other it would seem that both are telling at least some half-truths.

To the extent that in any democracy, especially like India, Modi and his chief spinmeister, Home Minister Amit Shah, ought to have a political counter who can at least attempt to out-spin and out-fib, Kejriwal’s rise is essential. I told you I see politics as a gladiatorial sport. Whether either of them is good for India is incidental to this particular post.

Unlike Congress Party grandee Rahul Gandhi, who brings an argument to a rhetorical gunfight, Kejriwal brings the same set of oratorial weapons as Modi. Add to those his ability to find resonance at levels of Indian society which generally get overlooked and you have the making of an interesting counter political force to the Modi-Shah juggernaut.

Kejriwal’s carefully cultivated middle class persona, shorn of the obvious appurtenances of raw power of the kind Modi exudes, has the potential to lift him and his party to a position of greater consequence not just in the prime minister’s and Shah’s home state and a sort of personal political fiefdom of Gujarat but even nationally. Even visually and sartorially Kejriwal chooses to project a sharp contrast with the one whom he considers his main challenge, Modi. The latter, of course, has become known for his sartorial obsessions. Kejriwal is the antithesis of that.

At a personal level, my overarching impression of Kejriwal, every time I see him is that he is either on the verge of having it or has just had a particularly satisfying meal.

I do not know if AAP will make any significant gains in Gujarat’s upcoming state assembly elections or whether in 2024, when national elections will be called, his party will emerge as a force to reckon with. So far, his game seems to be to punch far above his weight by employing all his innate craftiness and then some more. Had his party’s symbol not been a broom (jhadu), he could have also gone for a rickshaw. It is a vehicle terribly efficient for Indian roads and carries within it a sense of ordinary joys such listening to hit Hindi cinema songs.

Speaking of songs and rickshaws, I remember the expression of unbridled joy on the face of a rickshaw driver who was transporting me from Juhu to Bandra sometime in 1982 with the song ‘My name is Anthony Gonsalves’, the blockbuster hit from Manmohan Desai’s huge hit ‘Amar Akbar Anthony’, blaring full volume. By a remarkable coincidence, I had hailed the rickshaw just outside the bungalow of the superstar Amitabh Bachchan recuperating from a nearly fatal onset injury for one of that very Desai’s movie called ‘Coolie’. ‘Amar Akbar Anthony’ was released in 1977.

To Vinoba Bhave, again

Vinoba Bhave

 

Today happens to be the 127th birth anniversary of Vinoba Bhave.

 

Reupping a short post I had done on March 18, 2015 when I was at the Gandhi Ashram to shoot my documentary 'Gandhi's Song'. Bhave was an extraordinary figure. If I had the means, I would make a biopic of his.

 

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 Suhrud, 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.

Some snarky observations about what it costs to maintain British monarchy

King Charles III, Photo: https://www.royal.uk/

I have no axe to grind with the British monarchy because I have no dog in the fight. Once you get past the mixed metaphor of grinding and dogfight you will find some interesting details in my post.

I have long wondered how much it costs the British exchequer to maintain the royalty and all the trimmings and appurtenances that go with it. I have a specific answer for this year to March 31. The net expenditure is 102.4 million pounds or a little over $118 million. This is not a figure I have conjured up in the grip of irrational rage. It is from the horse’s mouth, the horse being the official website of “The Royal Family.”

The official financial summary of the royal family’s upkeep costs makes for some interesting reading. For instance, of the 102 million pounds 63.9 million pounds was spent on property maintenance and 23.7 million pounds on payroll. Obsequiousness and servility come at a cost.

This is how the summary explains the sovereign grant that the Windsors receive.

“The Sovereign Grant Act 2011 came into effect from 1 April 2012 and consolidated the funding provided to support the official duties of The Queen and maintain the Occupied Royal Palaces. Until 31 March 2012, funding had been provided under the Civil List and the Grants-in-aid for the Maintenance of the Occupied Royal Palaces, Royal Travel and Communications and Information.

The Queen’s official expenditure is met from public funds in exchange for the surrender by The Queen of the revenue from The Crown Estate. The Core Sovereign Grant is calculated based on 15% of the income account net surplus of The Crown Estate for the financial year two years previous. The Crown Estate surplus for the financial year 2019-20 amounted to £345.0 million, thereby producing a Core Sovereign Grant of £51.8 million for 2021-22.”

Here are some key financial details.

• The total Sovereign Grant for 2021-22, including the dedicated amount for Reservicing, amounted to £86.3m (2020-21: £85.9m), equivalent to £1.29 per person in the UK.
• The £86.3m is made up of a core grant of £51.8m which funds official travel, property maintenance and the operating costs of The Queen’s household, and an additional dedicated amount for Reservicing of £34.5m. The core grant equates to 77p per person in the UK.
• Income earned to supplement the Sovereign Grant was £9.9m, an increase of 5% from £9.4m (2020-21). The figure remains less than 50% of pre-pandemic levels and continues to largely reflect the impact of Covid-19 on The Royal Collection Trust’s ability to welcome visitors to the Occupied Royal Palaces.
• Official expenditure was more than the Sovereign Grant and the supplementary income earned, with net expenditure of £102.4 million, a 17% increase on the previous year. This was driven by spending totaling £54.6m on the Reservicing of Buckingham Palace – an increase of 41%.
• The Sovereign Grant reserve has reduced by £14.6m (2020-21 £2.3m was drawn down) to pay for significant work relating to the Reservicing of Buckingham Palace.

I suppose since it costs an equivalent of just 1.29 pounds per person in the United Kingdom to fund the sovereign grant it is fine. The question though ought to be why it costs anything at all any person in the U.K. other than the members of the royal family.

As republicanism likely grows in the Britain and elsewhere in the U.K. and anti-monarchy sentiment rises with it, it would be useful for the people to know these details.

In the Indian context, which once had more than 550 small princely states before its independence in 1947, the country used to give the families lording over these states what is known as privy purses, a sort of regular allowance to maintain their lifestyles. Privy purses were one of the conditions on which many of these princely states agreed to join the Indian union. They were a version of what the British monarchy receives even while still ruling the country. The privy purses were abolished by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1971 much to the chagrin of indolent royal families.

In fact, the term privy purse is very much part of the British system even today. The sovereign grant is reviewed every five years by the Royal Trustees who include the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Keeper of the Privy Purse. In the interest of clarity, the privy purse is not an actual purse like an Hermès bubblegum pink purse, that costs an obscene 38,000 dollars in the U.S. It is another name for the state funding royal hubris.

After Charles’s formal proclamation today as king perhaps he should seriously consider asking William, now the “Prince of Wales” and his official heir, Kate, the “Princess of Wales” to start earning some real money to underwrite their fabulous lifestyle. After all, how long can an average citizen and others pay even if it is just £1.29 per person in the UK.

Queen Elizabeth and India

I wrote the following for Indica News yesterday.

By Mayank Chhaya

Queen Elizabeth II first visited India in January 1961, the month and year I was born. Obviously, I have no memory of that visit. What I do have are remarkable three-part chronicles on YouTube by British Pathé News.

They are a fascinating account of a 35-year-old Elizabeth traveling to India, a country that her compatriots and forebears had plundered and pillaged for nearly two centuries almost until 1947. Incidentally, Elizabeth was the great-great grand daughter of Victoria, who declared herself the “Empress of India” in 1877 and under whose reign a cruelly devastating famine was allowed to ravage India. Millions died during the famine.

The welcome that India laid out for Queen Elzabeth in January 1961 was spectacular and in keeping with the country’s civilizational hospitality albeit a tad too effusive considering the British had retired barely 14 years prior to her visit. A special rostrum, for instance, meant for her public reception in Delhi took three months to build. A million-plus people attended the public reception where the queen said she felt like it was home in India.

Among many things I was struck by was a gift that the Delhi Corporation presented to her. It was a two-foot-tall model of the 240-feet Qutub Minar, carved from an elephant tusk. Her husband, Philip was given a silver candelabra. One can reasonably wonder why a recently independent country would gift a visiting head of its former colonizer a model of a minaret built in the late 12^th century by Qutb-ud-din Aibak, first ruler of the Delhi Sultanate and an invader.

The queen’s coronation took place on June 2, 1953, barely six years after India became independent. By the time she made her first visit to the former “Jewel in the Crown” of the British empire, India had begun the process of rebuilding itself from the ruins left behind by invaders and colonizers, the last being the British.

Notwithstanding, New Delhi extended a characteristically warm and overwhelming welcome to the British couple who among other places inevitably visited Agra and the Taj Mahal. Huge crowds lined up to greet Elizabeth traveling in an open car. Another thing I was struck by the sheer servility of two Indian men, who would have been called “servants” then, putting on velvet overshoes on the feet of Elizabeth and Philip as if the two could not do so themselves. Even their overshoes were made of velvet.

From Agra, the couple traveled to Udaipur as well as Bombay and from there they went to Karachi in Pakistan.

The queen visited twice after that in 1983 and 1997, the latter marking the 50^th anniversary of India’s independence. During the 1997 visit she went to the Jallianwala Bagh Memorial at Amritsar, the site of the utterly inhumane demonstration of the naked power of the British empire when on April 13, 1919, Brigadier General Reginald Edward Harry Dyer ordered troops to fire on peaceful protesters, mowing down hundreds and wounding hundreds. She was reported to have said, "It is no secret that there have been some difficult episodes in our past. Jallianwala Bagh is a distressing example." However, she did not formally apologize then and never did after that. Britain has never apologized for the massacre.

On a separate note, for decades it has been India’s hope that the famous centuries-old diamond Koh-i-Noor to be returned by Britain from the royal family’s Crown Jewels. It was last seen publicly in 2002 atop the coffin of the Queen Mother, the mother of Elizabeth’s, during her funeral. There are no indications that Elizabeth ever considered returning the diamond to India.

In the queen’s passing comes to an end the vestigial link between the British empire and India, the latter, of course, having established itself as Britain’s equal since 1947.