EARLY MORNING PATRIOTISM PILL

I take it every morning, six days a week. Dropping whatever I was doing at the moment. Standing to attention. No talking or fidgeting allowed.

I may fudge my taxable income figures, or curse the government, buy goods from sellers avoiding customs duty, or apply for a Green Card at the first opportunity. But I must never fail to stand up whenever the national anthem plays. Because in our topsy-turvy, show-and-yell society, I must always flaunt my patriotism.

In our college, "Jana Gana Mana" plays every morning, Mon-Sat, before lectures start. We stop in our tracks and stand immobile, while the Nightingale of India melodiously - and rather lengthily - sings the well-known words.

Words written by a favourite poet sitting down at his favourite desk in his long gown, a faraway look in his eyes, white hair and long beard and serene smile creating an almost-divine image of creation. Words springing from a creative mind, overflowing in doodles and squiggles on the pages where he scribbled. The creative mind that penned, not one but two national anthems for two bordering nations - India and Bangladesh.

You see, posture has got nothing to do with patriotism at all.

It is the thrill you feel in your veins when the tempo in the song increases at "Jana gana MANGALADAYAK jai he" and the trumpets and drums unite in harmony to accelerate the blood in your veins. It is the little goosbumps on your skin and the prickle of sudden tears in your eyes at a nameless pride that swells up during the song.

Patriotism can be felt sitting down also.

If we can pray sitting down, why cannot we love our country sitting down?

TEA, COFFEE, OR...?

I am in the middle of the latest book by Alexander McCall Smith in his No.1 Ladies Detective Agency series, THE MIRACLE AT SPEEDY MOTORS. McCall Smith says in the book, "The telling of a story, like virtually everything in this life, was always made all the easier by a cup of tea."

This delightfully languid series features the 'traditionally-built' (oh, what a lovely excuse for obesity!) detective-of-life's-little-problems and dispenser-of-wise-wand-warm-solutions, Mma Precious Ramotswe, and her assistant,the much-more-rigid Mma Grace Makutsi. Both of them drink plentiful cups of tea throughout the day, with Mma Ramotswe preferring the red bush tea (lovely forest-y name, don't you think?).

When McCall Smith praises the virtues of tea as a nerves-soother,temper-calmer, tongue-loosener, soul-refresher,camaraderie-builder, feel-gooder, most of us in India would echo, "How true".

Tea, perhaps, unites more people than any religion does. But, just as religions divide themselves into factions and sects and whatnots, tea is also divided into a number of different categories - of colour, cut and method-of-preparation.

We grew up knowing that there were two 'best' kinds of tea - the Assam variety and the Darjeeling variety - and, being parochial, fond-of-debates-at-the-drop-of-a-hat Bengalis, we vociferously championed the Darjeeling variety (never mind if Shubhas Ghising and his Gorkhaland cronies were trying to chuck Bengalis out of Darjeeling). A good cup of tea was made by adding the aromatic leaves of Darjeeling tea to just-boiling-water, taking it off the gas/stove, letting it soak for a while, and adding sugar and/or milk only if you liked it that way. True tea connoisseurs preferred not to let anything dilute the taste and fragrance of tea, sniffing in the aroma deeply and pleasurably and closing their eyes in ecstasy before taking the first sip of the elixir.

What a culture shock when I shifted to Mumbai! Here the most-loved cuppa is the one which is boiled with large amounts of milk till possibly nothing remains of the distinctive tea-aroma. To add to the sacrilege (from the Bengali point of view), people often add things like adrak (ginger) and elaichi (cardamom) to the over-bolied concoction! And the resultant muddy, thickish liquid is gulped down with relish, either the whole cup, or half-a-cup (the cutely named 'cutting' chai).

And coffee, the hot 'South-Indian filter coffee', is a SERIOUS CONTENDER to the supremacy of tea! Coffee, for most Bengalis, is a diversion-drink, to be taken in fancy bone-china mugs (coffee MUST be served in mugs, tea in CUPS, or so we were told) when guests drop in, especially in winter. It is emphatically NOT a dozens-of-time-a-day-drink-of-sustenance, for Bengalis at least.

And as for the new-fangled entrants like green tea, and herbal tea, all true-tea-addicted Bengalis will say, "Jatto shob! (Bosh!!). We'd rather believe in ANTI-CAPITALISM than in ANTI-OXIDANTS, you see. Tea is for pure pleasure, health-issues are completely secondary.

Not to take sides on the tea-vs-coffee debate, let me confess that I am a tea-totaller. I DO NOT DRINK TEA and I DO NOT DRINK COFFEE. Not the hot varieties, anyway. I like my tea cold, with lemon, or with ice-cream (they did a great job of that at Dolly's in Dakshinapan, the tea-boutique in Kolkata). And when I go to Barista, or Cafe Coffee Day, I have my frappe or my latte ice-cold (but no chocolate, please). And if there is fresh-lime-soda (or jaljira or nimbu-paani) I'll opt for that!

I guess that makes me a FREAK in the eyes of most tea/coffee/both- addicted Indians.What's your brew?

INK IS IN

The ink on your index finger is suddenly IN. Because it IN-dicates that you have exercised your right to vote. Because it shows your IN-clination: you care for the future of this nation. Because it is an assertion of your citizenship – your identity as an IN-dian.

In the elections this time, because of the model code of conduct enforced by the Election Commission, there has a marked absence of posters, pamphlets, wall-paintings, sloganeering; all the loud and colourful accompaniments to the political juggernaut.

Instead, there has been a lot of visibility given to citizen groups and NGOs like Jaago Re, groups of people asking other people to come and vote. Celebrities are urging us to use the finger (not oily-smiley politicians mock-humbly begging for votes with folded hands). The inky finger has become the hottest fashion accessory.

The first round voting turnout was 58-62% - not bad. The rural populace, stoical, suffering, yet upright, has always exercised its franchise. It is the urban upwardly-mobile class that was accused of distancing itself from the democratic duty of voting. The designer sunglasses and the headphones clamped to the ears blocked the sights and sounds of the Real India. Now that the upward mobility has been halted in the tracks somewhat, perhaps there is time to look at the bigger picture.

The picture that includes all of India – the hut and the high-rise, the yuppy and the yokel. We will not be able to change this picture substantially, but, if we vote, we will be able to put our own mark on it.

So, let’s go vote. But let us think before we ink. And let us not forget that voting should be a matter of INFORMED CHOICE. Therein lies the true worth and power of that tiny dot of ink.

ASSORTED HAPPY NEW YEARS

We Indians are a clever lot. Long, long ago, when the Divine Creator was chalking out the human calendar, Indians said, “O Mighty One, please do not give us only one new year’s day like you have to the Western World. They usher in the New Year on 1st January, and wait 364 days for the next one to come along. We are an impatient lot. We don’t want to wait so long. Also, we like to celebrate and we need excuses for that. So, can you please give us a dozen New Years each year?”

The Divine Creator thoughtfully stroked his long white beard (make that “the day-old stubble in the cleft of his chin”, if you want an image-makeover for the old chap), gave his trademark benign smile and came up with a SMART SOLUTION to this somewhat bizarre request: each community would have a separate new year’s day, separated from each other by weeks or months, so that there would be valid excuses for celebrating. Which means declaring government holidays, shopping for new clothes, visiting and gossiping with family and friends, and eating a lot of sweets and other calorie-rich food. Along with other activities like playing the latest Bollywood hit-songs very loudly on the loudspeaker (for the entire community to hear, of course).

The Gujaratis and the Marwaris bring in their new year a day after Diwali (being business-minded, they combine the two festivals to make the whole affair costly but cost-effective). The Parsis have their Pateti in August, and the Maharashtrians celebrated Gudi Padwa a few weeks back (along with the Sindhi Cheti Chand, Manipuri Cheiraaba, Kashmiri Navreh and the Ugadi of the Telugus and Kannadigas).

As is quite evident, the allocation of new year dates reflects a certain bureaucratic bungling on the part of the Divine Creator’s minions (a trait which has been inherited by the public sector in India). For instance, certain dates got mixed up, and the Punjabi Baisakhi, Tamil Puthnadu, Malayali Vishu, Oriya Mahabishuba Sankranti and Bengali Poila Baisakh all fall on the same day, or on consecutive days in April. Instead of breathing down each other’s necks, they could have better spaced out. Of course, our Indian indefatigible officials are trying to rectify the error by attempting to relocate some of the new years. Wikipedia informs me that the "OFFICIAL" Malayali New Year comes in August, and that certain sections in Tamil Nadu are also campaigning to shift their New Year to another date. But change, as always in India, is a slow and laborious process, fraught with debate, discussion and delays.

And so, we have a whole bunch of New Years coming up. Since I do not know how to speak either Punjabi or Tamil or Malayalam or Oriya, here’s wishing SHUBHO POILA BAISAKH and a better new year to all of you. Like every year, let us crib and cheer, embrace and jeer. What to do, we are like this only.

THE FESTIVAL OF DEMOCRACY

I've been wondering...if Diwali is the festival where the rich-poor divide is very marked, then Holi is the festival which bridges that divide.

Diwali depends (partly) on how much you spend for a few moments of light. In Mumbai, this surreal city of superfluous spending, families spend huge amounts of money on lavish displays of fireworks, which light up the sky in rainbow colours and echo through the neighbourhood in a burst of crackers. Of course, the people huddling under canvas sheets under flyovers can gaze wide-eyed at the light-and-sound display, but it is all as much out of their reach as the stars which are outshone by the jubilations of the wealthy.

Holi, on the other hand, is much more friendly on the pocket. If you want to, you can equip yourself with expensive eco-friendly colours and precious pichkaris (water-dispensers). Kids in our building have been roaming around for the past week with sophisticated water-filled guns and tanks, practising their water-spraying skills on each other (and other unsuspecting victims).

But, if you want, you can also arm yourself with the even-more-eco-friendly mud and dust and mix it all up in a broken bucket and drench everybody around you (including yourself and that neighbour's-spouse-whom-you-secretly-eyed).

Holi allows us to forget our identities for a day and mingle with each other in the way the colours mingle and become one indistinguishable (and extremely hard to get rid of) shade. That is the true colour of India, the true shade of our democracy.

On Holi, all trespasses are forgiven and all divides (haves and have-nots; self and neighbour) forgotten. Happy Holi!

FREIDA PINTO - MY (UN)FAIR LADY?

Poor Freida Pinto. While whooping it up at various parties all the world over in the wake of Slumdog Millionaire's super success, our poor little girl in the limelight has been hounded by bad press.

Apparently, in her baby steps up the fame-and-fortune ladder, she has been stepping on a lot of touchy toes. There was the ditching of former fiance/husband Rohan Antao (gleefully played up by the media, with photos of a mopey Antao wishing her all the best). There was the snubbing of Wendell Rodricks, the Goan designer who gave darling Freida her first break in modelling. Wendell makes delicious free-flowing gowns which can grace the red carpet as well as any other. Instead, 'international' Freida is opting for Dries Van Notens and Gallianos galore (the blue net gown at the Oscars got a very mixed reaction).
And there is the simpering smiles and cosying up to the eligible Dev Patel, a budding romance which seems constructed only for the cameras.

All this rankles. Latika (her character in SDM) was a woman who was forced to compromise, yet who always rememebered her past loves and loyalties. Freida's press-created avatar comes across as a girl who chose to compromise, and who has willingly and quickly forgotten her past - loves and loyalties included.

There seems to be a moral which is being subtly created and reinforced - the glamour of the West (Hollywood, etc) turning the head of the gullible Indian girl and making her forget her tradition and culture.

Maybe I am being over-critical, maybe Freida is really a manipulative-miss-on-the-make, but then we have never really come across a clarification from her, have we? And it is so easy for self-righteous guardians of Indian values to point fingers and say, "See, what a slum-bitch she is." I can recall a similar anti-Aishwarya Rai campaign in the press when she tried to make her mark in Hollywood. Maybe India likes to keep its heroines under a metaphorical purdah - at home in Bollywood, rather than creating a flutter abroad?

REPUBLIC DAY THOUGHT

I've always felt that 15 August is a day when we celebrate our Independence from the shackles of the past, our liberation from servitude to another nation, our freedom from the imperial British bondage.

And 26 January is a day when we celebrate our founding fathers' vision for our future. The Constitution embodies the hopes and dreams of what India should be, it is a blueprint for the future and the building blocks of the present.

And so, on Republic Day, while it is all very well to garland photographs of freedom-fighters and pay homage to past leaders, it is more important to tell our students and children about the significance of our Constitution, so that we can learn and follow about our duties and rights, about how the government and citizens can together build the nation - a sovereign socialist secular democratic republic, each nomenclature lending meaning to and completing the others. It is a time to renew our pledge that in our own small way we will contribute to the making of our nation. We will stand up for justice, we will fight for liberty, ensure equality and foster fraternity. It is a time to affirm, "Yes, we can", and promise, "Yes, we will."

BANK BLOOPER

The spouse and I went to the bank a few days back to put some money in a fixed deposit. The lady at the counter graciously helped us out with the forms, and then gave us a photocopy of the different rates of interest for fixed deposits.

The chart mentioned the rates for the different TENORS. The spouse and I exchanged bewildered glances (isn’t ‘tenor’ a musical term referring to a high-pitched male voice?), before comprehension (and amusement) dawned. Ah, TENURE! The interest rates were given for different terms/periods of fixed deposits.

Being English Literature students once-upon-a-time, we pounced upon the MALAPROPISM with glee and giggles. Surely unexpected from a posh private bank with an all-India network, where, presumably, the photocopied rate-chart was being circulated all over India?

Or maybe, was it a clever musical symbol for the recent rise-and-fall of various economic indices, including interest rates? Maybe someone at HDFC Bank conceals a musician’s soul under the bland banker’s façade?

SINGUR SHAME – UGLY AUR PAGLI

The withdrawal of the Nano project from West Bengal is the most depressing and disappointing news I’ve read in a long, long time, more so because I, like so many other hard-working, right-thinking Bengalis, was hoping that the project would somehow be salvaged.

Not that the project was a pristine one. Questions can justifiably be raised as to the way in which some of the land was acquired, and maybe on other policy matters as well. Ms Mamata Banerjee could well have asked for a referendum to be held, or some such other legal and acceptable form of protest.

But then, legal and sane is not what Mamata is all about. She is famous for her histrionics, for rushing in where angels fear to tread and for her pro-people paglami (madness). She has to maintain her brand image, and the image of West Bengal can go take a dive for all she seems to care.

She is such a wrong sort of opposition leader in a state which desperately requires a strong and SENSIBLE opposition. It is simply not healthy for a democracy to have a ruling party, which by hook or crook, has remained in power for donkey’s years.

The CPI(M) is an ugly party, period. In its cynicism, behind its doublespeak, under its smooth manipulation of facts and factions, in its ruthless and systematic mowing down of any protest, in its seeping down and eroding basic services like health/education and basic values like work culture, in its three decades of anti-industry-stance and recent pro-industry ‘won’t you come into my parlour, said the spider to the fly’-attitude, it reeks of ugliness. A little deodorant in the form of a smiling Buddhadev Bhattacharjee is not really enough to hide the stench.

There is something rotten in the state of Denmark (as Hamlet said) and Ms Banerjee is not the person to stem the rot. Instead of offering viable alternatives, she is getting sucked into the very rot which she is supposedly exposing. And caught in the crossfire between UGLY and PAGLI, the Tatas have left Singur, breaking a million hopes.

I feel so, so sad when I hear people talking dismissively and derisively about West Bengal. It’s a place where people talk more and work less, where no business can thrive because people are only interested in politics, where it rains bandhs and strikes…that is what I hear all the time. The red party flag has become synonymous with STOP WORK.

The Singur project was supposed to change all that. It was supposed to herald a new era, a BENGAL SHINING instead of a BENGAL SHIRKING. That is not to be. And the schism between my West Bengal, muddled and riddled with self-destructing Ugly-s and Paglis, and the rest of India, marching ahead with new-found confidence, has widened all that much more.

ENTER THE ELEPHANT-HEADED GOD

Well, once again it’s Ganpati-season in Mumbai. Festive notes waft briskly (is that an oxymoron?) in the air, both the musical kind and the monetary kind, because most Indian religious festivals are all about display. And then, Ganesha is THE GOD OF ENTERPRISE, be it FINANCIAL (ALL CAPS AND IN BOLD PLEASE, WE’RE IN MUMBAI – COMMERCE CAPITAL OF INDIA) or otherwise (fine print only, please, for those foolish enough to have non-financial ideals and enterprises…or should that be enter-prices?).
Back in Kolkata, the main festival is the four-day Durga Puja, which means a four-day long holiday. No work (except to eat, talk, roam and dress up to your heart’s content), and all play (in all its different connotations, including the flower-fragrance-redolent, goddess-blessed, drumbeats-in-the-backdrop pandal-flirtations).
But in rushed-and-ready brisk-and-busy Mumbai, though Ganesha visits us for over ten days, we have a measly two-days off. I guess that’s how it should be, because the portly deity is a shrewd business-fellow, and would perhaps only bless the industrious. So it’s work as usual, with a holiday at each end, fitting in a hectic twirl of mandal-hopping in the evenings between frantic-work-day and exhausted-night-sleep.
So different from indolent, lotus-eating (and currently Singur-shamed) Kolkata! Where there are potbellies (and potholes) galore (well, that is also the case in Mumbai), but which seems to have been sadly neglected by the otherwise-benign Gajanana and his devotees.

INDEPENDENCE DAY JOTTINGS

India is…
…as ancient as the mountains and oceans which embrace it; as recent as the latest bomb-blast (that attempts to explode the notion of India as a nation).
…as convenient as a spittoon for cynical outbursts (against the government/population/pollution/corruption/roads/traffic/you get the drift?); as luminescent as Lata Mangeshkar’s “Aye mere pyaare watan” (O my beloved nation).
…as preciously-begotten as our independence and the centuries of sacrifice and struggle that made that magical midnight tryst with destiny possible; as carelessly-frittered as sand through our fingers as we rush, blinkered-blinded, towards self-oriented goals, denying/devaluing/destroying everything else.
…as fragmented as shattered windowpanes (after yet another bout of public-fuelled arson) by divisions of class, caste, religion, language, even food habits; as united as the spontaneous eruption of unanimous joy at any sports-victory (the latest superhero being Abhinav Bindra).
…as frantic-fast as the rush-hour sprint of passengers to catch the local trains; as silted-slow as the bullocks who sit down (with their cart) and chew cud (their driver chews tobacco instead) to block traffic on highways.
…as sentimentalized as the lump in my throat and the tears in my eyes whenever I hear the national anthem; as soppy as the television-serials and the tear-jerking movies watched by us be-sniffling billions; as soaring as the tri-colour fluttering high; and as supremely variegated as the peacock’s proud-tailed display or the tiger’s arched-striped back.
India accepts, absorbs, praises, pushes, moves, immobilizes, mystifies and de-constructs…all in the same day and also all down the decades and centuries.

AD-VICE and AD - VERSA

I’m the kind of person who watches ads on TV (and reads them in newspapers and magazines) with avid interest.

Recently, two ads for Cadbury’s Chocolates caught my interest, although for totally opposing reasons.

The TVC for Cadbury’s Dairy Milk showing a crowd of people on a railway station intently watching a nail-biting cricket match is really, really funny and bang-on observant:

It pokes fun at our cricket-obsession. Only a sari-clad woman in a tea-stall is unaffected by the match. All the others are glued to the TV, including the seller hawking Dairy Milk bars in a tray – he foolishly, if magnanimously, offers free bars if India wins.

India doesn’t, as happens so very often (in real life, that is). They lose in the very last ball to the unfancied Kenyans. Again, a wonderfully satiric take-off on the irresistible, if irritating, predilection of the Indian team to lose almost-won matches with monotonous regularity.

After the deflating defeat, the crestfallen crowd is cheered by a young boy, determined not to miss out on the free-chocolate offer. He asks the vendor to give the promised treat because “koi toh jeet gaya” (at least somebody has won). Accurate child psychology and karmic philosophy, that.

And finally the hilarious exit lines – the bewildered vendor, finding his chocolates disappearing at an alarmimg rate (Indians love freebies) amidst much cheering and shouting of “Kenya jeet gaya” (Kenya has won - Indians celebrate at any and every excuse), timidly asks “Yeh Kenya hai kidhar?” (Where is this Kenya?). And the self-satisfied, smug-ly ignorant average monkey-capped middleclass Indian (for whom Kenya is a name that rhymes with Babua and his ilk, common nicknames in INDIA) answers, “Idhar hi toh tha…gaya hoga kidhar” (He was here only…must have gone somewhere). Totally brilliantly ridiculously witty.

NOW, can anybody tell me how this same company can come up with the extremely INANE and sick-making ad about their Celebrations range of chocolates, where a precocious young boy offers his sister a box of gift-wrapped chocolates, saying it is a book. And the girl – the ASININE, BIRD-BRAINED TWIT – actually turns down her mouth in disappointment! How SILLY is that? I do realize that many young children do feel that books are useless, but does the ad (and the company, and the agency, and, by extension, the viewer) really have to endorse that view?

I felt so, so disappointed and disgusted, especially since my expectations were raised by the terrific Dairy Milk ad.