Mayank Chhaya Daily

Manek Chowk of Ahmedabad: Tetris on Steroids

Bhadra Fort and Gate, Ahmedabad (Circa 1411) Photos: MC

After writing 45,000 words more than a decade ago, I have been dragging my feet on my book about Ahmedabad. The expectation is that my current visit to the city after nine years will not only revive the biography but even propel me to wrap it up.

As part of that revival, this afternoon I decided to loaf around the heart of Ahmedabad in Manek Chowk, between the Bhadra Fort and Sultan Ahmad Shah I’s mausoleum; Ahmad Shah being the founder of the city in 1411. Today happens to be the 613th anniversary of Ahmedabad’s founding.

Manek Chowk was always a sensory overload for as long as I remember. The two predominant fragrances of Manek Chowk are a mélange of incense from the Bhadrakali Temple and the loban dhoop from around Badshah Aney Rani No Haziro (the mausoleums of the sultan and his queen). Between the two fragrant bookends lies a whole range of olfactory and auditory experiences.

Speaking of auditory experiences, decades were rewound for me in minutes while navigating through the often stiflingly narrow lanes as vendors asked me, “Bolo saheb, shun lesho?” (Tell me, sir, what would you like to buy?) It is very nearly a rhetorical question since the vendors do not wait for you to answer. It is like a reflex action for them.

One vendor, who was lovingly stacking up brassieres by stiffening their cups into little hills, asked me “Bolo saheb lesho?”

“Hun bra nathi pehrto, (I do not wear a bra),” I said.

He laughed and said, “Pan Bhabhi to pehrta hashe ne. (But your wife -- me being his presumed brother meant my putative wife would be his presumed Bhabhi or sister-in-law -- must wear it.)”

“She has many bras but thank you,” I said and continued towards the Haziro.

During my last visit nine years ago, I vividly remember sensing a great deal of disquiet around Ahmed Shah’s tomb. The chapter about Manek Chowk describes that feeling thus: “The air around the tomb seemed to be trembling with a certain menace and pain.” The feeling was no different this time around too.

What I found particularly remarkable for me personally was that I slipped into the hubbub and frenzy of Manek Chowk without missing a step or a heartbeat. It was as if I had never left it. The clinching evidence of that was the ease with which I zigzagged and jaywalked through the utterly unruly traffic. It was as if Tetris was on steroids. In fact, I paused in the middle of the road to admire myself for a moment.

Watching Macbeth on the banks of the Sabarmati is a weirdly affecting experience

Watching Shakespeare’s Macbeth on a moonlit night on the banks of Ahmedabad’s Sabarmati river, somewhat distracted by a cacophony of honking vehicles and an occasional ambulance blaring its siren, was a weirdly engaging experience.

Speaking of engaging, having grown up in the Ahmedabad of the 1960s and 70s I never thought a play in English, and that too one by Shakespeare, would have an eclectic audience of those in their 50s and 60s as well as those aflame in their early teens would enjoy lines such as these delivered powerfully by Mallika Sarabhai as Lady Macbeth:

“Come to my woman’s breasts

And take my milk for gall, you murd’ring ministers,

Wherever in your sightless substances

You wait on nature’s mischief.”

Or for that matter even this effectively delivered one by Yadavan Chandran as Macbeth as soon as he enters:

“So foul and fair a day I have not seen.”

Shakespeare is an acquired taste for most people since it demands attention and focus when it comes to its dialogues, monologues and soliloquies. There is often an element of grandiloquence to the language delivered with a medieval English cadence. Those could be a bit jarring when delivered in a variety of Indian accents. I must admit that that was a definite concern for me as I entered the lovely amphitheater at the Sarabhai family’s iconic Natarani complex.

I must also be candid in saying that my concern with accents was not wholly unfounded, but I got past it quickly. Mallika, of course, being a consummate international performer was the exception to that concern. In parts, so was Yadavan. They both delivered credible and affecting performances. Sarabhai, in particular, had several riveting moments before the impending assassination of King Duncan while hatching the plot and in the immediate aftermath. As Macbeth flounders about a bit, she is remarkably in control of the situation, including the blood-soaked daggers.

It is no breaking news that Macbeth is fueled by an unseemly lust for power, and nothing is beyond the pale for the Macbeths to attain and preserve it. It is propelled by a prophecy by three Weïrd Sisters, also known as the witches, that Macbeth will take over as the king of Scotland. I violate no spoiler alert here when I say that Macbeth does indeed ascend as king after murdering Duncan, represented as an apparition-like dummy in all white.

However, at the back of his mind is also another prediction by the witches that even the descendants of his comrade-in arms-Banquo (Sarvesh Sridhar) will also reign one day. So, Macbeth has Banquo bumped off as well. Macbeth’s paranoia mounts as he goes about murdering others as well, such as nobleman Macduff’s wife and children. Eventually, Macduff and Malcolm, one of Duncan’s sons, mount a rebellion against Macbeth, who tries to seek some reassurance in the witches’ promises but finds none.

Macduff kills Macbeth even as Lady Macbeth, who has become unhinged, commits suicide.

Many of the scenes are done well despite the fact that the play’s staging is almost bereft of any major props. What lends this Macbeth a feel of haunted air laced with an impending peril and death is the music by Raag Sethi.

I found especially memorable the scene where Duncan’s body draped in a glowing white shroud slides over the heads of bearers as it is escorted out of the stage.

Shakespeare’s plays are famously dense with a lot of words. It is commendable that the central characters remember them and deliver them credibly. Particularly for Sarabhai and Chandran, there is an immense amount of verbal burden to bear, but they do generally wear it lightly.

For me, the acoustics were a problem in terms of the clarity of what was being spoken. As I mentioned, that is where the problem of accents somewhat exacerbated the challenge for me. However, about ten minutes into the play, I became accustomed to them.

On a tangential note, there was cloyingly lovey-dovey couple sitting not too far from me, frequently whispering sweet nothings to each other. I was about to do a Duncan on them but mercifully they left early.  

Sharply directed by Massimiliano Troiani, Sarabhai’s ‘Macbeth’ is an intelligent musical interpretation of this Shakespearean classic about power at any cost. One grouse that I have is that the murder of Duncan lacks the commensurate brutality of the sheer visceral act.

All Shakespeare plays are an acquired taste in their original form but once acquired that taste is delicious. It is true of Natarani’s Macbeth too as it unfolded under some early fragrance of the surrounding neem trees on a Friday night. Its witchcraft and murder were heightened by the near full moon. 

Remembering: Human vs AI

One of the themes I am exploring about artificial intelligence (AI) is the obvious difference between humans and AI systems when it comes to memory, as in remembering.

Because AI systems are machines their recall ought to be perfectly accurate to the minutest of details. I would assume that since AI systems have no room for interpretation, both convenient and expedient, while remembering, they will remember their past like clockwork. It will always be precisely the same with zero variation. That is, of course, boring unless what they are remembering was intrinsically interesting when it happened for the first time.

That is not the case with humans. Our remembering is approximation often heightened with imagination. Sure, there is often the essential truth in the way human memory works but there is always the mist or haze or cloud or what you will of unconscious falsification/accentuation/extenuation around it. I would go so far as to say that every act of remembering in humans is distinct even if it is the same event but for some core details remaining unaltered.

The question whether AI will become so evolved as to not just rival humans but even replace them has to take into account whether it will also reach a stage where its memory will be malleable like ours. Attached to that is the question of morality and ethics; whether AI systems will evolve so much as to think about the moral and ethical dimensions of their actions the way humans frequently do.

Since they will remain recognizably machinistic in their physical appearance for the foreseeable future, it is hard to say whether their remembering will prompt comparable facial and bodily expressions and gestures. An important part of being human is, after all, to appear to be human in the way we deploy our various limbs to express ourselves. I wonder whether AI systems will be able to replicate those. I say this because our faces change when we are remembering something. It seems highly unlikely that that can happen with AI systems for now. At best they will be able to mimic human expressions efficiently.

Human memory has biology and chemistry involved unlike AI systems which, I suppose, has only algorithms and chips encased in glistening or brushed steel frames. (Literary exaggeration.)

Someday I would like to expand on this theme with neuroscientists, psychologists as well as AI and memory experts.