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Hartog, Historicity and Heritage

2011-08-18T09:16:00.003+05:30

Patrick Wright’s book ‘On Living in an Old Country’ which examines the way we percieve and look at history today is interesting indeed. While reading it this morning I came across his reference to a French Historian named Francois Hartog. Francois attempted to explain the different ways in which we attempt to connect to history across different periods. He called these ‘regimes of historicity.’ An interesting term. It made me ponder over the way we relate to and deal with history in different eras and how history is never just the past but our interaction and reaction to the past in the present.

During the 19th century, at the height of Imperialism, History was looked at for inspiration for the future. After all it was the memory of the great works of antiquity – the marvelous intellectual and administrative achievements of the Greeks and Romans that inspired the Renaissance and from there modern science and the Enlightenment.

History then was looked at for inspiration as a long linear line of progress. The White Man’s Burden, his civilizing mission. His ‘Historical’ mission to save the world by ushering into it modern scientific thought.

History was of the monument – Monuments were there to inspire the present towards a golden future. Statues of Plato, Artistotle, Socrates, Newton, Nelson or Wren were inpirational. They embodied the virtues needed for the onward march of western progress.

Then came communism and the Marxist simplification of History as an eternal bipolar class struggle. Suddenly History was to be re-written. Most of the achievements that Enlightened Europe looked up to were to be condemned as either feudal, capitalist, monarchist or bourgeoise. In fact history was only to be looked at with disgust as a series of mistakes and abominable cruelty not to repeated as the Communist state took its masses to a classless utopia.

Then came post-colonialism and the sudden freeing of colonies. History again came into play differently. It affected the formerly colonised and the erstwhile colonisers differently. And in fact both showed a bipolar disorder in their view of history.

The former colonies rediscovered a series of national heroes from the past whom they enshrined in monuments for present inspiration. India’s new emblem was the famed Ashokan pillar, streets were named after natonalist heroes and legends of the past. Cities were renamed to their earlier pre-British titles – Madras became Chennai, The Hyderabad state became Andhra Pradesh, the place of the Andhra peoples as Madras presidency became the place of the Tamils. But it was bipolar - at the same time they also wanted to remove a lot of the embarassingly backward memories of the country's history - caste discrimination, superstitions, customs like Sati or in China footbinding - and look more to the future then to the past. Nehru looked at the gigantic steel plants and heavy industry as the Temples of a new India. This India as an India of the future not the past.

The former colonialists had a similar bipolar view. They looked back with pride, sadness and nostalgia at their glorious imperial years when they ruled the world and brought civilisation to millions. While, at the same time, running away from it as a period of mass exploitation, a misconcieved linear idea of progress, the horrors of imperialist greed and jingoism that brought about two World Wars. Bipolar disorder again.

40-50 years ago writes Hartog - a monument of the past was put up to inspire the future. There were three utopias people were looking at – the European and American powers were looking at a liberal, democratic, modern post-colonial world order. The Communists were looking towards their classless Marxist utopia and former colonies were looking the the birth and growth of their brand new nations into the new global powers. What an exciting time for the ‘future’.

Recently Hartog says – the world’s new ‘regime of Historicity’ is pure ‘presentism’. The memorial has replaced the monument, heritage has replaced history. History is not an inspiration for the future anymore. Everything has changed. History is purely to be enjoyed the way a film, a cricket match, a circus or a TV serial is enjoyed. Purely for the joy it gives in the ‘present’. There is nothing deeper to it. With this replacement of ‘history’ by so called ’heritage’ History has become big business. A 'Heritage' industry. It’s a multi-billion dollar tourism industry of 17day/16 night whistle-stop tours of historical sites. Purely to be enjoyed in the present and then forgoteen about.

Hartog says history now is no more about the future – about inspiration for the future – about a context for the future, but purely like the latest Hollywood blockbuster. Enjoy it for 2 hours and then go home, sleep and back to work tomorrow.

Presentism and Heritage have replaced the Past and History. And as the past ceases to inpire but only to entertain - does that mean we have nothing more to look ahead to apart from the fun of the 'now'?

Spirit Voices

2010-05-29T08:45:00.001+05:30

They came to me
In Spirit voices
Voices with no words
In childhood they came
As alone-ness or a streak of sunlight
They entered winter wool
And moist eyes
A heavy heart
A fragment of paper

They saddened with dusk
Or dying
Last breaths
Fallen leaves
Sandpaper faces
And creviced wrinkles
Sadness held them like a cup
And one felt a tight embrace
Of fear
Fearing the wrenching seperation
And detachment of sadness
Into an ethereal realm
Of lightness far away

In happiness
One held thoughts
And songs
And love
Heavy
Like a filled water balloon
One spattered love
In bursts of laughter
Splattered that water balloon
On a wall
And felt happy all over

They come to me
These spirit voices
Less frequently now
Less than they used to
They come with attachments
Of reason
That open along with the file
They don't smear
They formulate and think
But I still wait for them
Still wait for myself rather
To still open
And just open
And wait
Because they'll come
Again

Literature?

2010-04-10T10:58:00.001+05:30

I’ve just finished reading the morning papers. Was thinking how our newspapers can be like the minds of people with multiple personality disorders. An IPL celebration a few pages ahead of the massacre of 76 CRPF personnel by Maoists. Rihanna talking about her pals having an Indian wedding a few pages up from a srap dealer dying of radiation he picked up from scrap containing Cobalt-60 lying around at a scrapyard. And then of course movie reviews – and then, how India is second only to China in the increasing sales of Light Commercial Vehicles.

The great news of 3G technology now being approved and auctioned by the government to private bidders came right below the radioacive waste and on the right of the Home Minister’s offer of resignation after the Maoist massacre in Dantewada.

It was while reading Eric Fromm, a brilliant psychoanalyst, that I got his description of the insanity of our media. Advertisements for shirts that will make you irresistible next to a child’s rape, amputated limbs next to a brand of designer sarees for weddings.

What does it mean? Has the world got so complex, and do all of us live in so many small particles of the world that we ourselves are like the newspapers – bits of unrelated human matter living out our own parts, like these unrelated and unrelatably unconnected articles – and we only become a part of a whole unconsciously by a scientist’s cold laws – Adam Smith’s supply and demand, Comte’s sociological theories, Freud’s priniciples of drives and instincts, Toynbee’s theories of factors that influence history. Is that what makes us a part of a whole – a theory in an academic lecture or Marxian discourse – an abstraction, observation, reflection, analysis, empirical statement?

After puzzling and being baffled over today’s papers – I sipped some steaming hot tea and closed my eyes under a cool fan that provided a tranquilizing respite from the scorching 40 degree Delhi summer outside.

As I closed my eyes in this safe haven – the paper stories came to life in my imagination – the growing up of these CRPF men, the time they were boys, their parents and school. Being brought up in their neighbourhoods, their parent’s responses to their decisions to apply for the paramilitary forces. Their children. The regular reports of their postings to their families back home. SMS-es, chats with kids.

And then the ambush, the soldier lying screaming as a bullet, mortar, shrapnel is inside him slicing into his body parts – maybe his eyes, genitals, spine – crushed, agonising. Screaming helplessly minute after minute, hour after hour to silence. Probably being kicked by one of the attackers and beng stripped of his ammunition and weapons in response – maybe thankfully shot in the brains as a respite to get out of the agony.

And then the reflection of the story – 400 words – next to a shirt brand that makes you irresistible to women and prospective emplyers, above the new 3G revoution that’ll make our mobile phone internet surfing be at double the speed, below a vibrant headline of the do-or-die IPL game tonight.

I opened my eyes, in this cool safe, secure South Delhi flat of mine, sipped some more tea that was growing lukewarm, as my eyes opened – imagination under closed eyes converted to analysis over opened ones. The paper had so much that I wanted to know – so much more information that I needed and wanted. How is our economy growing? Car sales were a good sign for India but what progress was their on alternative cleaner energy sources to petrol and diesel? When are the Nilekani’s Unique Identification Cards going to be out? What impact will that have on a nation – that is now traceable, accountable, contactable? I read about a Bangladesh judge thankfully banning Islamists from forcing women under the veil required in the shariat? More questions – how do moderate Islamist states function and integrate Sharia with modern democratic principles?

I wanted to grasp so many subjects that would provide keys to this plethora of puzzles in the newspaper laid out in front of me – the variety of contexts that I needed to have to each of the stories that intrigued me. Economics, Political Science, History, Sociology, Psychology, Ethics - would give me some answers I thought.

But then I realised I rarely read the newspaper in such detail. And then where’s the time to get to know so much?

More importantly I realised that this Multiple Personality Disorder, this skipping, unrelatedly on the surface of human events – carefully sliding over the dehumanised thin ice that prevents us from falling into any of the cracks of tragic human experience and pain that the stories hold in their limited words – keeps me away from being a media hound.

Am I an escapist then? An avoider? Perhaps. Somewhat. But I don’t think entirely. I like novels, or books that dwell through an entire experience of a subject. Is that an anal psychological trait? One thing at a time? Top to bottom? In depth? No. I don’t think so. I think a novel does justice and lives out a story. Fully encompasses, holds, delves and experiences. Falls under the thin cracks of these newspaper stories and drowns in the depths of human life and feeling. The Grapes of Wrath made us experience the Joads in their pain during the Great Depression across the hundreds of pages of that voluminous tome. And yes, I’m sure the New York Times had the heading and story (next to attractive adverts and baseball no doubt) of Depression deaths due to starvation. But I felt it in Steinbeck, lived and breathed with Tom Joad.

I’m still in my safe haven. I’m extremely community unfriendly, quite isolated in my own bubble. Perhaps I can grapple out of my self-centred existence – my comfort zone – and do more for my commnunity respond more as a citizen. (I actually plan to work on those traits this year. It’s a goal I’ve put down.)

Another goal this year of mine was which degree I would choose as a field of study because I plan to complete my graduation in this ripe middle age and start the first year of my chosen degree this year (in a few months in fact). I scrolled through in great detail the courses of London Universities Distance Education section on the internet.

At the end of all the dwelling and ruminating - I didn’t go for psychology, economics, sociology, media studies or politics that I’ve talked about above.

I went for Literature.

2010-02-03T22:30:00.001+05:30

I have always been with crumpled skin
Trying to feel through crumpled things
My thoughts dumped in crumpled bins
Freckled, pocked and sticky sins

I lived curled in womb-like warmth
‘Til I was unfurled, pinned
Pinioned, stomped
Breathless, windless
Sudden junk

Was hurled, uncurld
This swirled within me
I got drunk and stunk
Living
Mephistophelian funk

I loved, lost, lusted, mistrusted
Digested, Joked and Jested
Divorced, Debauched
De-drunk ‘til I slunk

Whimpering into quiet
Non-smoking edges of walls
White and logical
Analytical and brailled

I fingered blind reason
With pricked hands of faith
Bled through to dullness
Crimson to grey-green

I became translucent
Opaque, dull
Un-quaked

I neither uncorked nor paced
Didn’t steam got spaced
I lie crumpled now
In shedding skin
Crouching muscles
Hidden for a gym
I look lost
Talent-less, tossed
Not knowing begininings
Nor middles or ends
I find no bookmark
To rest awhile
I roll on
Urchinned entwined
Feeling in commas
Pausing at stops
Sometimes thinking my own
Sometime others quoted thoughts
I’m crumpled-stiltskin in
A corner found
Neither living nor dead
Not fading not found.

The Grand Cricket Appraisal

2010-01-16T07:42:00.007+05:30

With the sheer variability of cricketing conditions - from the pitch to the weather conditions - affecting cricket scores, putting some sort of yardstick or benchmark for what determines good team scores, batting and bowling in the three forms of the game might sound like sheer stupidity.

But I’m embracing that stupidity and making a list of yardsticks for the fun of it, knowing very well how subjective it is.

There is a mild degree of objectivity in these yardsticks though. And in some ways one can use these yardsticks as a very broad thumb rule for the success or failure of teams and individuals.

OK here’s the Grand Cricket Appraisal

These are what I consider good or bad scores for teams:

Test

Lousy
100-200

Average
200-300

Good
300-400

Very Good
400-500

Outstanding
500+

ODI

Lousy
100-200

Average
200-250

Good
250-300

Very Good
300-350

Outstanding
350+

T20

Lousy
100-120

Average
120-150

Good
150-180

Very Good
180-200

Outstanding
200+

And here are what I consider good batting averages for individual players (for ODIs and T20s strike rates are essential too)

Great Test Batsman
Average – 50+
Strike Rate – N.A.

Great ODI Batsman
Average – 40+
Strike Rate 100+

Great T20 Batsman
Average – 35+
Strike Rate 140+

And for bowlers:

Great Test Bowler
Average – below 25
Economy Rate – N.A.

Great ODI Bowler
Average – below 25
Economy Rate – below 6

Great T20 Bowler
Average – below 20
Economy Rate – below 8

All comments, tomatoes, rotten eggs, suggestions, solutions, opinions invited

Boring Test Cricket

2009-12-13T12:12:00.003+05:30

After my interest in test cricket being the "real" cricket got stirred again during the India-SL 3 Test series, the same interest completely zoned out in a horrendously dull and boring 3rd day's play of the deciding 3rd test between New Zealand and Pakistan at Napier.
After NZ got a sizeabale 250+ lead, Pakistan crawled their way to 128 for no loss by stumps.
Now, this could have been seen as an epic fightback, but after watching intently for over 2 hours I found it painfully dull and uninspiring, from a cricket lovers point of view. There are huge chunks of time in test cricket when absolutely nothing happens. The bowler runs in dunking almost the same thing ball after ball with slight variations and the batsman just defends decent delvieries and takes singles or twos of somewhat poor balls.
I contrast todays experience with the one I had yesterday during the mega-scoring 2nd T20 between India and Sri Lanka. The degree to which bowlers were under pressure to think and variate on each and every ball was amazing. Every ball was worth its weight in gold. One of the lessons of yesterday's match was Ishant Sharma who started off bowling beautifully yet ended up expensive with 2/42 of 4 overs. The reason he was expensive was he began in test mode with short bouncing and seaming deliveries and full, inswinging yorkers. One of those lethal yorkers was a classic test dismissal, bowling Dilshan for a duck. However after that, he carried on in Test mode against Sangakkara and Jayasuriya. He barely varied his pace at all. Therefore, while he got 2 wickets, he ended up expensive. In T20s the bowler needs everything - his test repertoire of full swinging yorkers, and short accurate bouncers to the body (the only test ball that ould be expensive is the one swinging outside off stump, while that can induce an edge in test cricket in the shortest format it allows batsmen to free their arms and whack). Apart from the yorker and short ball, the fast bowler needs a variety of slower balls - the very slow back of the hand knuckle ball, the leg cutter and the off cutter, also the slow bouncer and slow yorker. Every ball needs another strategy.
At the end of the day a bowler succeeds in any of the formats by being unpredictable. That's how a yorker after a succession of short balls gets a wicket, a googly after many leg spinners gets a wicket, a doosra after several offspinners, a quick arm ball after a series of flighted off spinners, an inswinger after several outswingers......
It's unpredictability which rewards a bowler in any of the forms - and the greatest pressure to be unpredictable comes in the T20 format.
Now, with batsmen too, the pressure to score takes them away from careful technique to unpredictable forays with both the willow and the stance. Backing away to the leg-side to make room, the dill-scoop, the moving towards off, the standing ouside the crease to convert a yorker into a full-toss, the reverse sweep etc. etc. etc. etc.
Fielding has to be at its best and so does captaincy, because every ball needs a careful look at the field and a word of advice to the bowler. There is no greater pressure on bowler, batsman, fielder and captain then the marvellous innovation of the millenium - the Twenty20!

2009-10-06T14:12:00.001+05:30

Art Garfunkel

I don’t know if we have souls
But imagine we do
Then play Garfunkel singing
“I only have eyes for you”

His voice
Like clouds
Angelic
Will stroke your soul like
Warm, amber honey
Unguent, glowing
Anointing
Gently inflaming
Like seeping perfume

Or

Like Amber again
On shallow pools at the seaside
Rippling and reflecting sunset.

Perhaps he sat looking at East River
Or the Brooklyn Bridge
Maybe the Statue of Liberty melted
And lowered her gaze
Looking out towards the Atlantic
Graciously welcoming a breeze
That resembled his voice

The fiery glow of neon
And the wandering pathways of Central Park
The austere gothic skyscrapers
Measuring miles in the sky
And the steaming subway manholes
Belching out citizens
Into orphaned streets

The butterfly buzz in the atmosphere
After a baseball bat swings
And touches the electric crackle
Of glistening Times Square
All melting into your coffee cup
Gulped gently
Sipped slowly
Smoothening the crevices of your soul
As the song (timing it’s seconds out)
Comes to a slow stop
Leaving on your tongue
The aftertaste of heaven

Ave verum corpus

2009-10-04T06:31:00.002+05:30

Every few days I pick a song
And wear it for a week or so.
Last week it was Bach's "Air"
This week, Mozart's "Ave verum corpus."

It's a privilege to stand in that line
Where the orphans are given food by the faithful.

I wore "corpus" the first day
When some of its divine choral voices
Came to me like a streak of holy sunlight on my bed.

I saw the twirling dust particles go back and forth
Like wavering humans in this still spiritual light.

I wore the song through shimmering heat-haze
On dusty roads, driving for an hour.

I wore it sitting on my terrace
Gazing at my potted plants at dawn.

I wore it the next day
Watching my daughter, fast asleep.

I wore it at midnight, hearing the hum of the AC
And the quiet of the moonlight.

It's strange to wear divine music
Through so many alleys and lanes
To hear it touch with grace whatever it sees

A week's gone by, it's time to take the song off now.
But before I do I want to hear it one last time.
With the tentacles of my imagintion withdrawn
I want to hear it
By itself
Pure
Naked
Music

Perhaps this time it'll be like the "brahman" the mystics talked about
When the senses detach themselves from illusory objects.

And I hear music in - only itself
Pure
Divine bliss!

Music.....now

2009-04-23T13:15:00.002+05:30

Music now, belongs
To the cynic, the critic
The slayer of sound

To lyrics that blush
And music of embarrassed
Nursery rhyme

To marketing
The press-con, the byte hungry
News hound

Songs educated by MBAs
Cast out for surveys
Abound!

Is it tra-la-la enough?
Does it merge
With the breeze?

Is it hipper and hopper?
FM friendly?
A traffic stopper?

Top 40, Top 50,
Sweet melody
Dolloped on ice cream

As background,
For teenaged, backless
Backseats

Behind sunscreen
In ear-piece
Amid elevators
And hotel lobbies

On posters with freebies
On facebook, on mp3.

Sound hasn’t thundered
Or wondered
Or mellowed
Or howled

Or disturbed
And perturbed
Or mangled
Or growled

Hasn’t
Used Art for art’s sake
Used craft or stave
Not written or smitten
Or educated and played

It’s under a thumb
Thicker than dumb
Eclipsed by a moon
That deafens tunes

In AMTs and Sec A-Bs
As backgrounds for TGs
Hooks please
No cacophony

It’s found its resting place
De-fanged and commodified
Turned into a product
That you sell
And I buy.

Of chance accidents and grace

2009-02-08T11:20:00.010+05:30

Of late I’ve been wondering about chance – about the minor, unplanned incidents that shift streams of open-ended happenstances and rivulets of odd occurrences into the gigantic oceans which influence the world.

We all of course know about penicillin and its accidental discovery by Alexander Fleming. What we don’t know however – is how penicillin-esque all life is. By that I, of course, don't mean that life is anti-bacterial but that it is fantastically accidental.

Which brings me to the series of accidents that resulted in that magical album that we all love, the album that won the Grammy Album of the Year award in 1987 – Paul Simon’s ‘Graceland’

Consider this:

Paul Simon visits a friend in his native New York sometime in the summer of 1984. Knowing Simon’s quite a music devourer his pal slips him an odd cassette he had got hold of that sounded really catchy called – ‘Gumboots: Accordion Jive Hits Vol. II’ Simon stares oddly at the cover and then shrugs and slips it into his car stereo on his drive back home. While driving, the master songwriter, owner of a thousand guitar chords unconsciously swings to the simple yet infectious rhythms of ‘Gumboots,’ ‘it’s a sort of simple three-chord jive with an accordion, guitar, bass and drums.’ He enjoys his drive home and finds himself unconsciously humming a lot of the simple tunes he’s heard.

Life gets back to normal and the cassette remains in Simon’s car – on and off when he wants a bit of music while driving in busy Manhattan, he slips the tape in again and starts grinning and enjoying the infectious tracks. Slowly he begins hearing the tape almost daily.

Later on he plays this music out to some friends of his asking them what style of jive this music is and is it American? Not too many people know and the very basic cassette cover with no information on it except the title can tell him nothing.

He calls the friend who gave him the tape who doesn’t know either because he was gifted this cassette as well. He calls the acquaintance who had come over at a party one day and given him this cassette – and then the information pours in – this is South African township music – the kind called 'mbaqanga' which with another kind of music (an almost rap music form) called 'kwaito' are unique Black South African township creations – specifically the townships around Johannesburg – Sophiatown, Alexandra, Soweto, Orlando.

Intrigued and now seriously curious Simon calls his manager in Warner Brothers and asks him to do some research on this style of music. A call goes out from Warner Bros New York to a distant little-known record producer in isolated, pariah Johannesburg: a man called Hilton Rosenthal. Hilton is known for producing the first multi-racial band in South Africa called Juluka.

Summer spills into autumn and thrilled at this interest shown in a form of music he loves so much Hilton sends Simon 20 or so LPs by post that covers the entire spectrum of black music in South Africa.

Simon spends the cold, snowy, winter months in New York enchanted by the sheer diversity and relentless groove – the cheerfulness and the unbelievable adversity out which this music has come – like the miracle of flowers forcefully, pushing their way in wastelands of weeds – isolated in the beginning – here a bunch, there a group – finally countless flowers, blossoming; in touch, in contact, forcefully pushing their beauty out through the weeds, the wasteland!

Winter turns to spring and Simon’s home exults to the grooves of all that came out of those sweating, sewage-seeping, shack-infested, crime-infested, forcibly settled, townships around all the big South African cities – Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, Port Elizabeth, Pietermaritzburg, Pretoria, Port Elizabeth, East London, Grahamstown……

Music played by small, making-ends-meet bands that get together in illegal residential beer halls called shebeens which are run by middle-aged, powerful women called queens. These shebeen queens were the unlikely patrons or rather matrons to these musical forms - kwaito, mbaqanga and uniquely South African - Jazz. It’s here that world-famous artistes like Hugh Masakela and Miriam Makeba had their origins. The sweaty halls where crowds would gather every friday night as friday was pay-day.

The evening would start late as exultant black workers would get off their long bus-rides from the whites-only areas where they were employed to their distant townships, all with money in their pockets. It was also here that gangsters running protection rackets in these slums would collect their weekly dues; duly extorted every friday evening (before the money vanished) as the buses rolled in

Now via the strangest of chances – an accidental tape handed over to Paul Simon in New York, who distractedly played it on his car stereo – this South African sound had thoroughly infected one the world’s most famous singer-songwriters.

Winter was ending and by now – Simon knew all of Rosenthal’s offerings by heart – every jubilant shout, every plaintive wail , every chopping horn solo, every rubbery bass-line, every tribal call-and-response vocal pattern, every sugary African guitar lick.

Through winter the song-writer in Simon came out and bounced over these carefree rhythms and tunes. Independent tunes and lyrics flooded his head – one was with crazy imagery about ‘the boy in the bubble and the baby with the baboon heart’ marveling at these technological ‘days of miracle and wonder.’ Another, a heart-rending journey with his son from his first marriage, to Graceland, where everyone would be received and accepted, in this symbolic rock ‘n’ roll mecca, the home of the first rock ‘n’ roll great Elvis Presley. Others about walking under African skies the land of this music’s origin or about an illicit romance in the streets of Kimberley, the diamond mining capital of the world controlled by De Beers, where a poor boy ‘empty as pocket, with nothing to lose’ woos a rich white girl with ‘diamonds on the soles of her shoes’ – all the songs superimposed on these addictive rhythms on these joyous ta-na-naaa whoops and hollers.

By February Simon’s empty pockets were full of songs and he headed out on the strangest trip of his life – from JFK in Queens to Jan Smuts International airport in Johannesburg – the pariah, outcaste capital of the apartheid ruled country of South Africa – where from the 70s no western band played – and the ones that did were outlawed. Sitting next to Simon was his friend and engineer of many years Roy Haley.

As they landed Simon settled himself in a white hotel in Jo’burg and then completely ignored white South Africa – every second, every moment was spent with the musicians who contributed to that ‘Gumboots’ cassette that he had been given. Tao Ea Matsekha (The Lion of Matsekha) a group from Lesotho, a musician who called himself General M.D. Shirinda and the vocal groups the Gaza sisters and the Boyoyo Boys.

These musicians are heard on ‘The Boy in The Bubble’ and ‘I Know What I Know’ As Simon later recounted: ‘The music for “I Know What I Know” comes from an album by General M.D. Shirinda and the Gaza sisters, a Shangaan group from Gazankulu, a small town near Petersburg in northern South Africa. As more and more Shangaan people migrated to Johannesburg, their music grew and became increasingly popular.’

Simon was struck with wonder when he heard them ‘the distinctive sound of the women’s voices were what attracted me to this group in the first place.’

Simon recorded with all these bands in a couple of orgiastic sessions in the Ovation studios in Johannesburg. Soon Simon was meeting more musicians – he met the stunning bass player Baghiti Khumalo and Ray ‘Chikapa’ Phiri’ the guitarist. With them he recorded the title-track ‘Graceland’ and got them to play for the entire album.

He then recorded ‘Gumboots’ the title track from the cassette that he first fell in love with. The term amazingly connoted a form of music. A form favoured by miners and railroad workers who all wore heavy gumboots that they plodded in to work.

While all this was going on – Simon remembered a BBC documentary he had seen many months back called ‘The Rhythm of Resistance: The Music of South Africa,’ in that he remembered this stunningly powerful a capella vocal group. He tried to remember the episode clearly, the band was called lady..something. He quickly called his studio's sound engineer who immediately exclaimed ‘that’s “Ladysmith Black Mambazo” one of the best loved musical groups in the whole country.’

‘Well, I want to record with them’ said Simon. The only problem was by now Simon was on the last flight out to London on an assignment.

In London, he dreamt of the overpowering choral sound he heard on that documentary. It haunted him – such immense power and spirit and vitality and passion – it was overwhelming. It was like something he had never heard before, neither in the black gospel choirs in America or in vocal jazz groups – this was unique, amazing! He dreamt of where these boys were from – the engineer said they came from Ladysmith, hence the name, a town near Durban in Natal. He kept mulling over his experiences in Soweto, that world-famous township that symbolized for the world both apartheid and the resistance to it.

Inchoate words formed in his head, he gazed out of his hotel window, to rain drenched streets that he immortalized in ‘Kathy’s Song’ so many years back, but this time it wasn’t any normal poorly lit, glistening street but the dark night in Johannesburg, in South Africa that flooded before his vision – haunting and inky black.

‘We are homeless, homeless
Moonlight sleeping on the midnight lake’

The words came and the plaintive melody began humming in his ears, spilling on to his tongue – ‘homeless, homeless, moonlight sleeping on the midnight lake’ – the rolling hills, the smoky townships, the cape flats, the table mountain, the winelands, the Bantu homelands, the british port of Durban, zulu settlements, xhosa clicks, coloured minstrels, everything – a hodge-podge of sensations almost burst his heart – He screamed – ‘HOMELESS, HOMELESS, MOONLIGHT SLEEPING ON THE MIDNIGHT LAKE’ the despair of it, the beauty of it, the pain of it – a pain that he as a jew could palpably feel from his parents and grandparents – refugees from Hungary, refugees escaping pogroms and persecution – homeless in New York.

He woke up bleary-eyed and drove to a familiar recording studio and called a shift engineer to set the recording for him and strummed and sang his lines late into the night.

Early next morning a demo tape of his singing was couriered to a surprised Joseph Shabalala, the leader of the 10 man black choir – Ladysmith Black Mambazo. With a note asking him to spontaneously complete the rest in his native zulu.

A month later the two met for the first time in the famous Abbey Road studios in London – the crossing that the world saw the Beatles walk across on their Abbey Road album cover – the studios that saw the recordings of The Dark Side of The Moon, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – countless albums were produced and countless melodies that are now immortal were hummed in it’s padded corridors and carpeted canteens. Simon was adding to that list with ‘Homeless’ a stunning vocal song, a landmark on his new album.

A year had now passed and Paul Simon had spent many months with many New York musicians adding finishing touches to his Johannesburg tapes at the Hit Factory in Manhattan.

By 1986 the album was ready for release. Simon was himself amazed – he occasionally blinked or pinched himself to believe that this release of his was a reality – it didn’t sound like Paul Simon at all – it was novel – it was like nothing he had ever done or composed – it was as though he had been granted an African soul gratis – without asking for it or paying for it. There it was – that soul – that came to him by accident, now stamped, packed and sealed and lying in front of him in three formats – in an LP, cassette and the newly discovered CD – waiting for him to sign a hundred copies before this Manhattan megastore opened in the morning and listeners trooped in lining up to buy the first few autographed copies. He stared at the slowly evaporating, alcohol smelling felt marker in his hand – gazing at it hypnotized, half smiling half dazed with song lines running like a ticker tape in his mind.

‘Graceland, Graceland – I’m going to Graceland’

Shouts, whoops and hollers in the Johannesburg studios.

‘And I maybe obliged to defend,
Every love every ending
Or maybe there’s no obligations now’

He felt free, unfettered – like this sound in the enslaved townships had reached and freed him. A free man enslaved and freed by a slave, enslaved. The paradox of it! The accident of it! The miracle of it! He felt deeply religious for those few moments – intensely connected, sublimely spiritual, in trance.

‘Maybe I’ve reason to believe
We all will be received
In Graceland.’

He smiled and signed the first copy.

Haiku lullaby

2009-02-08T11:18:00.001+05:30

Walking alone
Quiet sanity
Empty heart

Sleeping alone
Empty sanity
Quiet heart

Pushkar Pics

2009-01-28T22:21:00.007+05:30

Opening and Closing

2008-10-06T21:53:00.002+05:30

I always felt I opened a little
With crushed ice on a bedspread
In the dotted eye of a wildflower
When you came to me with your sunlight smile

I always felt I opened a little
In the crinkled pattern of crumbling plaster
At the flapping pages of fragrant paperbacks
When my embrace first held your inner core

I always felt I opened a little
At the heart of circling sand
In the wetness of heaving grass
When I slowly enclosed the thought of being with you forever in my palm

2008-09-28T10:22:00.013+05:30

A nine year old boy dies
xxxxBlown up
xxxxxxxxTo shreds

Trying to return a plastic bag
xxxxCheerful grin
xxxxxxxxRuffled hair

Containing a detonating bomb
xxxxFull of nails
xxxxxxxxCrucifying nails

Carried by two men on a bike
xxxxBleeding faith
xxxxxxxxHoly Terror

Who fling it aside
xxxxTo explode
xxxxxxxxOn quiet faces

The newspaper lying on the sofa
xxxxHeadlines read
xxxxxxxx‘Deadly Saturday’

Tells me this story
xxxxTiffin bomb

xxxxxxxxKills two

As I hold my child
xxxxWarm and clinging
xxxxxxxxTwo month life

Trying to discover
xxxxShe’s asleep now
xxxxxxxxPalms clutching

My newly found fatherhood
xxxxLove is
xxxxxxxxA verb, an action

After two months
xxxxLove is
xxxxxxxxAn activity

Of my indifference
xxxxLove receives
xxxxxxxxWhen it gives

I rock her to peaceful sleep
xxxxSunlight
xxxxxxxx& Darkness

Tenderness

2008-09-27T08:31:00.001+05:30

Tenderness
It is
A bit like early morning sunlight streaks on a crumpled bedspread
A bit like smiling to yourself in solitude
A bit like running your fingers through your lover’s hair
A bit like the glow of your bedside lamp when all other lights are switched off
A bit like the goosebumpy warmth of a nostalgic memory
A bit like a hand holding Rumi’s poetry
A bit like curling up with your favourite TV sitcom about to start
A bit like the first gently steaming cup of morning’s brewed tea
A bit like moonlight spreading dancing silhouettes of tree leaves on your bare chest
A bit like the searing saxophone notes on night drives, on roads lit by sodium lamps
A bit like the texture of Paul Simon’s voice on Kathy’s song
A bit like the methol-peppermint mist of foggy winter breath
A bit like the outline of your lover’s first sleepy smile in the morning
A bit like the pen curling through the letters at the end of a poem and then standing perched on the last full stop.

The Weight of History: Istanbul Musing

2008-09-24T15:46:00.008+05:30

History falls heavy on my shoulders here,
Sometimes so palpable
Like heavy, hairy, signet wearing fingers
Pressing on my arms
Hammering home my insignificance
My being a small link in humanity's chain
Reminding me of humility
Laughing at
The ones that laugh
At history.

History falls heavy on my shoulders here,
Sometimes like a thick, heavy cloud
Gently draping me with
Its melancholy and depth
Its timelessness and varying incarnations
Guiding me gently to a cafe
To see pigeons atop monuments at sunset
Fly away like the empires gone by
Leaving their monuments behind.

History falls heavy on my shoulders here,
Sometimes so turgid and full
That it bursts open because it has so much to hold
Filling a thousand books
Greedily inked by the richest of pasts
Running those empires and years
Furiously under my gasping eyes,
So that I, dizzy, under a lamplight with the flooding of empires - of Byzantium and Greece, Athens and Persia, Romans and Christians, crusades and sieges, the Turks, the Ottomans, the faithful and the infidel,
The world wars and their ending
The new republic and me sitting
Silently hearing the unending quaking souls
Under the cobblestones at my feet fly past engraving their ink in my eyes, while I am forced to sit
Because I'm so nauseous
Because I'm so full.

History falls heavy on my shoulders here,
Sometimes like a silent professor or quiet psychoanalyst or wise saint or philosophical prophet,
Teaching me lessons, showing me patterns
Telling me that I live by the same laws that emperors lived by, that their subjects lived by,
That history's laws seperate none
Not the slave from the king
Nor the BC from the AD
They apply to us all for all time
With us either crashing against them like the Bosphorus waves on castle walls
Or learning and living by them we feel
At peace, full of tranquility, passion, yearning and love
Like the moonlit Bosphorus,
Still,
A quiet lover
A spiritual saint
With messages for both continents
Of Europe and Asia
(Which it connects or divides depending on which history we choose to see)
To be torn up or preserved for peace.

History falls heavy on my shoulders here,
Perhaps you and I, together sometime,
Can sit along these cobbled streets,
Sipping our tea, swallowing our wonder
As we sit silent, with earnest awe and righteous amazement
Gazing at
The city of history
At Istanbul, all of a two and a half thousand years old
Giving us some permanence
Some continuity
Something bigger than ourselves
Some slice of immortality
In our brief, eventless lives
Perhaps we should enjoy the weight of history.

Flocks

2008-09-24T15:43:00.002+05:30

FLOCKS

They fly everywhere
Like a succession of musical notes
Octaves, minors, majors and melody
From the top of searing minarets
Emaciated with purity, tall with austerity
Like a gliding cannon shot
When the muezzin calls for prayer
Flocks of pigeons in flight
Flying with the wailing ney of Sadreddin
Flying from the warnings of the blazing fire
Flying to the different minarets of the world
Flying on quarternotes of melody
Flying by clouds of conjecture
Storms of certainty
Draughts of opinion

Starlight on emeralds
Sunlight on aquamarine
Daylight on marble
Moonlight on silk

They fly with the prophet
Nightbound to Jerusalem
Sharing his revelation
In his cloak
Shuddering ominously
Shaking off the terror
Of the thudding blocks of cool marble
Containing the slabs of scripture
The bashing of brains
The dulling of imagination

Delhi, Baghdad, Istanbul, Mecca
Tabriz, Bokhara, Alexandria, Marrakesh
They fly everywhere from every religion to every freedom in every land
Flying from minarets when the muezzin calls for prayer.

‘Spiritual Gin’ and The Tangled Web That Weber Un-weaved

2008-09-13T09:31:00.008+05:30

According to Lenin religion was ‘spiritual gin’. He quite obviously inhabited a world of more drinkers than people who smoked up. Marx believed it was the opium of the masses so perhaps Karl’s era had more of the latter or perhaps he read with fury as a journalist of the way the English were forcing millions of Chinese to smoke up. Either ways his theory didn’t really hold in England, the capitalistic paradise he landed up in after being expelled from his Germanic homeland.

This post is about three sociological giants and their theories about religion and why Max Weber seemed to have rocked the religion theory towards the truth much better than the other two; it’s also about the British working class’s ability (god bless their honest, hard-working souls) to put many theorists and theories in their place with in their earthy commonsensical practice.

Emile Durkheim believed religion was the creation of the ‘sacred’ by society. Social acts were divided into the sacred (religion) and the profane (day-to-day life). Durkheim meant by profane something quite different than what is in common usage, profane in its Latin meaning is nothing but ‘outside the temple’ or day-to-day life that is lived outside the temple. He also added that religion in the final analysis was nothing but a worship of society itself. Society symbolized its values, beliefs, customs and integrating and uniting forces into God (s), rituals, symbols and signs – basically religion. Society then developed structures to support this – churches, divinely ordained rulers, laws and codes. Religion provided the status quo, security and stability needed by society.

Marx pretty much agreed with this, except the fact that religion did so pissed him off. For Marx’s opiatic views of religion we need to see how it fitted into his basic view of society itself. According to him, as we all know, history was nothing but an endless yin-yang of a class that owned the means of production exploiting another class that slogged it out by providing its labour. According to him religion was nothing but a tool for the privileged, exploiting class to maintain their supremacy. This is because religion either soothed the exploited classes or promised them a better life after death or simply justified their present condition as being God’s will. All this according to Marx completely suited the ruling classes and established an eternal status quo of supremacy, subjugation and exploitation. The exploited classes – soothed and acquiescent – never united to take up arms against their oppressors.

My heartfelt commendation to the British working classes at the top of this chapter was because the proles in London, the British proletariat in general in fact, quite disproved both Marx and Lenin by much preferring real gin to the spiritual one. Around the time of Lennin’s comments the working class in London were merrily getting sloshed on gin and not attending the spiritual gin offered by the Church of England. This has happened so much in the course of England’s history that I remember sitting in a quaint pub in the Lake District in England where there were, hung on the wall, copies of the proclamations banning gin in England down the ages. It seemed their preference was neither to form a unified, revolting (pun intended) class, that revolted against the means-of-production owning capitalist nor was it to devoutly believe the angelic after-life of the church and accept their status in life as a divine deal with earthly zeal. They instead went to pubs and got blown in a revolting fashion. God bless their souls!

And that leads me to Weber. According to me Max Weber hit the nail on the head by stating that no one clear theory explains the sociology of religion, instead, each society has to be looked at as a unique entity, with a history and social structure that has developed due to a special set of circumstances.

I began musing on this with the constant accompaniment of a steaming cup of coffee perched in my barsaati in Delhi. Began merging Durkheim’s basic thought of religion being an integrating force for an other-wise unruly bunch of homo sapiens. And the making of things sacred that would keep social stability and status quo going.

I then thought of Weber’s theory of unique responses for each unique society. I remembered reading Toynbee’s theory that each society’s history is its own unique reaction to the challenges posed by its environment.

I started thinking of two sets of religion – the desert religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam and the Indian religion of Hinduism (I’m side-stepping Buddhism and Jainism for now as they were later responses to Hinduism’s excesses).

Let’s look at the way the religions have evolved; the sparse, harsh environment of scarcity in the desert must have lead to extreme infighting and bickering over very scarce resources. Let’s look at the response – all desert religions have one harsh God, who jealously allows his followers to follow no other (scarcity) and has very strict commandments and punishments (harsh laws to prevent the incessant in-fighting).

Now let’s look at Hinduism – the gangetic plains and endless rivers, the fertile soil and easy climate, the profusion of vegetation, the environment of plenty. Many gods, a god for knowledge another for wealth, another embodying fire another wind – plenty, abundance. The laws were harsh in some ways but also very flexible – harsh when it came to inter-marriage and mixing with the dark-skinned natives and therefore preserving their Aryan identity (therefore untouchability) harsh in terms of inter-mixing period – the caste system. Yet easy and overflowing with abundance - a profusion of paths and Gods. The path of bhakti (devotion), karma (work), Jnana (knowledge) and many more. In fact one could be accepted and affirmed as a naastik (atheist) as well.

Perhaps Weber hit the nail on the head by accepting the basic fact, that like many other things, religion too was very varied and its characteristics varied with different societies and their environments.

Both Weber and the English working classes basically proved the point that it’s not easy nor commendable to pigeon-hole the infinite variety of human social life and its manifestations like religion into three line summaries.

Sadly I’m a teetotaler these days, other-wise I could happily ended this post saying – now that the spiritual gin is dealt with, how about the real thing. Cheers!

Pappu can't dance, but Pappu sure can feed

2008-09-08T12:51:00.002+05:30

Much to my wife's dismay I've started calling our new born daughter Pappu. Riya, my wife, had beautifully named her Shaayari, after which my Pappu would ruffle even the most ebullient of spirits.

There are many reasons for this spontaneous bit of labelling on my part. Firstly the name is in the air, Pappu pass ho gaya, Pappu can't dance etc. Then there's her quizzical expression for starters. Her eyes expand like the universe and then gape wondrously at nothing at all. Only a Pappu would do that I reasoned. My wife says she's got my eyes vengefully and she may be right, but that may only prove that the world comprises many Pappus. Then, of course is her arbitrary clucking, a bit like a high pitched hapless stammering Shahrukh Khan in reverse to paint you a sonic description. Who else but a Pappu would do that. And then there's the clincher, her voluminous, guzzling, appetite, a veritable suckling, bottomless pit. One look at the heavenly peace that her satiated palate gives her confirms that she's most certainly a Pappu.

I hope she proves me wrong soon and develops beautifully into the poetic name she's been given. I hope she soars in her imagination feeding on the best this world has to offer but for now Pappu can't dance but Pappu sure can feed....saala!

The Empire Strikes Back

2008-09-07T10:32:00.011+05:30

Finally the penny has dropped. One can now sit steadfastly on ones haunches or lie luxuriously on one’s sofa or anxiously bite one’s nails watching the time run out or miss a goal because you had gone to the fridge to get another beer; whatever be your soccer watching situation, one reality has finally been chiseled and carved out in stone this year, on 1st September 2008 to be specific, the English Premier League has TRULY become the BEST football league in the world.

Truly – Because the final un-colonised EPL continent is now added to its football empire. Best because this continent had the world’s best players in terms of style, skill, flair, substance. The one continent which used to get me furiously quizzical – why the hell was it absent? Why weren’t they there? I google searched in vain. Asked football groups on yahoo in despair. Called my soccer fanatic friends only to get lost in fruitless digressions.

For two years I have wondered why the South American countries have not been a big part of the EPL. In particular Brazil and Argentina and then the others Colombia, Peru, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Ecuador etc. Why not? It was indecipherably, imponderable-y inexplicable.

Why did the world’s best league contain the mechanical force, speed and organization of the Western European countries, the physical force, stamina and speed of Africa, the quick dexterous moves of Korea and the odd flashes of brilliance from the Middle East, the new world flair of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the US. All of this, the world as its oyster but not the samba dancing, life-is-beautiful, football-is-an art surges, thrusts and turns of Braz-entina?

Let’s look at the ascendancy of various regions on the football globe: Europe and South America have dominated the game since its inception. Africa (with the stunning display that Cameroon gave the world in 1990 and the Nigerian super eagles in the ’94 World Cup) joined the other two continents as a force to be reckoned with. North America, Oceania and Asia have also begun to flaunt their wares on the footballing map. From being non-entities, Australia, New Zealand, USA, South Korea and Japan have made giant strides towards the apex of the footballing pyramid which seems to be getting broader and broader. The middle-east and North Africa (Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran) East Asia (Japan, South Korea and a rapidly improving China), Oceania (Australia and New Zealand) North America (a hugely improved USA and a rapidly improving Canada). In a short span 1990-2008 (a mere 18 years) the footballing map has rapidly changed.

The EPL, ever since its inception in 1992 has colonized the world’s football players. From just 11 foreign players named in the starting line-ups of the league’s teams in 1992 to over 260 foreign players in 2006 the league got the eyeballs of the globe stuck to its mouth watering line-ups every Saturday and Sunday. Very often EPL matches resembled World XI A vs World XI B, Arsenal and Chelsea began to play all foreign line-ups. And that’s where the puzzle began. In the 2000s the league had the best of Western Europe and Eastern Europe, the top players of North America, Africa, Asia and Oceania playing their leagues. The only ones who hadn’t joined the party were the samba dancers.

This was not written about much. But there were whispers of the speed of the English game being completely unsuited to the slower, skillful, dribbling of the South Americans (something which I found ludicrous after watching Messi and Tevez play for Argentina in the 2006 World Cup. They were like a Ballet Blitzkrieg - grace, beauty and amazing pace). Then there was the theory of South American players feeling culturally alien in England, preferring to play in Spain’s La Liga and Italiy’s Serie A, where a similar language, culture and fellow players were to be found in abundance.

None of this made sense. How could the world’s best footballing continent along with Europe be left out of what had become the world’s best (certainly most lucrative) league.
And then the myths were busted, the floodgates opened and the torrent of dribbling demons arrived.

The most plausible theory according to me for their absence was the myth of the South American’s being ineffective in the English style. And this myth for me was not broken by South Americans but players similar to them from Spain and Portugal. I think no one broke the Speed vs Style myth more than Cristiano Ronaldo. Cristiano, the Portugese Prince, showed that speed, skill and style could be combined into a lethal combination. He literally altered Manchester United. The entire club played differently with him and without him. His influence was amazing. The English Wayne Rooney was made to look like a dull, monotonous 800 metres athlete on a football pitch. He was Neanderthal when compared to the grace and dexterity of Ronaldo. He scored a mere 18 goals to Ronaldo’s 42 last season. Another man who helped the Latin American cause was the Spaniard Frances Fabregas for Arsenal, his still, beautiful, play-making, sometimes reminiscent of Carlos Valderrama, the Colombian playmaker with the Tina Turner hair, the same still, slow, touch football. Where other mid-fielders went for speed and surprise, Cesc paused, examined and chess-player like landed the ball at the feet of his best chess piece. This dexterity also forced Anglo-Saxon coaches of the Machine Age to realize how individuality, flair and sheer dexterity counted towards the goal tallies that they dreamt of. Later on in the 06-07 season, Carlos Tevez brilliantly fought the case for Latin Americans as he single-handedly helped West Ham United avoid relegation with his genius.

Last year the Spaniard Fernando Torres made his fellow Liverpool forwards, the short, mechanical Dirk Kuyt and the lanky Peter Crouch look like clumsy schoolboys. Also last year the Portugese Nani and the Brazilian Anderson were added to the Manchester United line-up to great effect. With the skill of Anderson, Nani and Ronaldo added to the experience of Scholes and Giggs and the odd flashes from Rooney, Man U did the double, winning both the Premiership and the Champion’s League.

This year, as said before, the floodgates have opened and finally the EPL empire is complete. The myths have been busted and the conspicuously absent samba on the football pitch will be wholeheartedly in evidence. Manchester City has signed up Brazilian stars Robinho and Jo. The Brazil Born Deco is gracing the Chelsea line-up. Manchester United sports 4 Brazilians and 1 Argentinian. Liverpool has 3 Brazilians and 2 Argentinians. Chelsea has grabbed 2 Brazilians and an Argentinian while their London rivals Arsenal have the precocious Denilson in their line-up along with the injured Eduardo (of Brazilian origin, now plays for Croatia) .

The EPL is complete and can now say with a Rolling Stones-like working class swagger that they are without a doubt the best league, if not the greatest league ever, in the world, hosting an array of footballers who would otherwise only be available for the public gaze in the once-in-four-years football world cup.

The empire is back - but this time with a football at its feet.

Going Dutch

2008-09-03T15:21:00.003+05:30

In colonial adventures and colonizing dreams, if the 1500s belonged to the Spanish and Portugese then the 1600s were handsomely won by the English, the French and the Dutch.

The Dutch entered the fray around the same time as the other two and like the other two fanned out east and west. To the east they sailed around the Cape of Good Hope laying the foundation for the future Afrikaners of South Africa, their next stop was Ceylon which they wrested from the hapless Portugese who the Dutch now followed to the priceless spice fields of modern day Java and took over that spice infested paradise.

Bathed in pomp, splendour and riches they carried the fragrances of nutmeg, cloves, pepper and cinnamon to the shores of Europe.

A chain of Dutch dots eastward – Cape Town, Ceylon and Indonesia. Leaving behind a heritage of names and signs – Afrikaners and Boers and the consequent history of South Africa, the wealthy burghers in Colombo; even today the Sri Lankan cricket team has a Van Dort and the literary fraternity a booker prize winning writer, Michael Ondaatje.

Westward their fate was impoverished and paltry. Attempting to lay the foundations of a New Netherlands, they just about scraped together the trading outpost of New Amsterdam which they let go of impotently after forty years of rule, to the English who promptly renamed it New York in 1664.

But still when I sat peacefully chugging in a NJ Transit train from Short Hills, New Jersey (where my brother lives) to New York; I passed by stations named Orange and South Orange, smattered remnants of Holland. Getting off at Penn station in New York and roaming the megalopolis there were Dutch remnants everywhere. The Bowery in downtown Manhattan, from the Dutch Bouwerij or farm; in fact the place used to be a stretch of road leading to the last Dutch governor Peter Stuyvesant’s farm. Then, of course was the Dutch village of Breukelen – you guessed it – today’s buzzing borough of Brooklyn. The Dutch named Haarlem river is the name of today’s famous African-American area of Harlem. And, of course, Wall Street, the street which earlier had a strong Dutch wall built across the Island to protect the Dutch traders.

Last but not least, from that Dutch stock came a family whose descendants had such a role to play in shaping America’s history – the Roosevelts!

They were a strict Calvinist bunch these Dutchmen. Iron discipline, racism and a belief in divine destiny were marked characteristics in them, even more than the Spaniards and Portugese who mixed merrily with local tribes in their colonies in South and Central America leaving us millions of mixed Aztec, Inca, Spanish hybrids and stunning Brazilian mullatoes. The Dutch too have left us their Cape Coloureds, who now form the majority population in the Western Cape province in South Africa, but they abhorred their half-caste progeny. They kicked them out of their long established homes in Cape Town during the apartheid era and treated them only marginally better than the blacks.

So today if a commentator during a Liverpool football club match talks about the fanatical home support the club get from the Kop (a section of the stadium so named due to its resemblance to the steep Spion Kop literally meaning spy’s hill in Afrikaans, a site where the English were embarrassed by the rustic Boers in the second Anglo-Boer war) or you come across a Sri Lankan batsman with the surname Van Dort or look at a South African map and skim through town names like Pietermaritzburg or Bloemfontein; if you hear Afrikaans spoken at the Cape Town airport or get a call from your boss (an Americanisation of the Dutch ‘baas’) you know that this famous and infamous race has tossed you some souvenirs from its four hundred year old colonial history.

She (from old scribbles circa 2005)

2008-05-31T15:42:00.003+05:30

She dusted Prince Charming off my shoulders
She kissed Casanova off my lips
She smiled away a Hollywood star in my swagger
She unbuttoned Satan off my hips

She wiped The Prophet off my forehead
She whispered the Patriarchs out of my throbbing ears
She stroked The Commandmants off my instincts
She left me only with my mid-life fears

Bizarre Blues, Black Night! - Drake's Dream

2008-02-09T13:46:00.002+05:30

Last night I was flying back from Chennai to Delhi on a late night flight. I spent my entire flight tasting the dimly lit aircraft with songs from my ipod, soundtracking the jet black night outside the craft window with the blue eyed soul of the Doobie Brothers and the gruff rhythm and blues of Ray Charles.

My flight landed at the Delhi airport well past midnight. A knife edge cold gush of breeze brought a shivery grin on my face which faded to a warm glow when I sat snug in my pre-paid cab with my windows rolled up. My fingers stroked circularly the wheel of my ipod. I stopped at Nick Drake. I had never heard him. I wanted to hear someone new, something unfamiliar. I was tired of the playlist processions of floyd’s giving way to zeppelin’s to the stones and the beatles, the doors, Clapton…

I stopped at Nick Drake based on a thread of memory, a recommendation from a music store buddy of mine. I was getting into lyrics and singer-songwriters in a big way courtesy my girlfriend then (wife now) who was a lyrics devourer a post noon lyric luncher, a night poem mood setter and a turn of phrase taster. “Pick it up, he’s one of the best and the least known” beamed my music store buddy, he of the coterie’s of rare album aficionados, bootleg collecting boasters and cd collection kings!

I never heard Drake ‘til last night, speeding on the neon silence of late night Outer Ring Road towards home. The album was called Five Leaves Left. It was haunting! Lush, lost, sad, melancholic, baroque. Drake juxtaposed all life’s opposites to me on that listen, romantic and lush, sparse and cold, brooding and dreamy, full of longing at times and then far away, cynical and cut off. Life’s yin-yang of opposites and ambivalences on that cold night drive left me entering a silent, asleep house with the aftertaste of melancholy and intrigue. Who was he? I heard he died young. Was it another tragic rock ‘n’ roll plane crash a la John Denver, Randy Rhoads, Otis Redding, the kind of rock accident that spares no genre.

I stuck his album on again and and searched for his life story on the net. What followed was bizarre. His album unfolded his fate, foretold his death and wrapped-up his destiny 5 years before his death at age 26. A poetry prognosis! The album started with “Time Has Told Me:”

Listening, haunted again, by this young old voice:

“Time has told me, you came with the dawn, A soul with no footprint, A rose with no thorn, Your tears they tell me, There’s really no way, Of ending your troubles, With things you can say”

I scanned allmusic.com’s profile of Drake, my laptop screen glow reflecting on the bedroom window.

“A singular talent who passed almost unnoticed during his brief lifetime, Nick Drake produced several albums of chilling, somber beauty. With hindsight, these have come to be recognized as peak achievements of both the British folk-rock scene and the entire rock singer/songwriter genre. Ironically, Drake has achieved a far greater stature in the decades following his death, with an avid cult following that grows by the year. Part of Drake's failure to attract a mass audience was attributable to his almost pathological reluctance to perform live.

Drake's debut, Five Leaves Left (1969), was the first in a series of three equally impressive, and quite disparate, albums. Drake created a vaguely mysterious, haunting atmosphere, occasionally embellished by tasteful Baroque strings. His economic, even pithy, lyrics hinted at melancholy, yet any thoughts of despair were alleviated by the gorgeous, uplifting melodies and Drake's calm, measured vocals. Neither album sold well, and Drake, already a brooding loner, plunged into serious depression that often found him unable to make music, work, or even walk and talk. Drake's final couple of years were marked by increasing psychiatric difficulties, which found him hospitalized at one point for several weeks. He had rarely played live during his days as a recording artist, and at one point declared his intention never to record again, On November 26, 1974, he died in his parents' home from an overdose of antidepressant medication; suicide has been speculated, although some of his family and friends dispute this. In the manner of the young Romantic poets of the 19th century who died before their time, Drake is revered by many listeners today, with a following that spans generations.”

I mulled over his tragic, solitary life, by which time the last track on the album played. I turned of the laptop and switched off the lights allowing the honey-like brooding darkness of his voice to take over:

“Fame is but a fruit tree
So very unsound.
It can never flourish
Till its stalk is in the ground.
So men of fame
Can never find a way
Till time has flown
Far from their dying day
Forgotten while youre here
Remembered for a while
A much updated ruin
From a much outdated style.

Life is but a memory
Happened long ago.
Theatre full of sadness
For a long forgotten show.
Seems so easy
Just to let it go on by
Till you stop and wonder
Why you never wondered why.

Safe in the womb
Of an everlasting night
You find the darkness can
Give the brightest light.
Safe in your place deep in the earth
Thats when theyll know what you were really worth.
Forgotten while youre here
Remembered for a while
A much updated ruin
From a much outdated style.

Fame is but a fruit tree
So very unsound.
It can never flourish
Till its stalk is in the ground.
So men of fame
Can never find a way
Till time has flown
Far from their dying day.

Fruit tree, fruit tree
No-one knows you but the rain and the air.
Dont you worry
Theyll stand and stare when youre gone.

Fruit tree, fruit tree
Open your eyes to another year.
Theyll all know
That you were here when youre gone.”

The Other World: Thoughts while listening to The Flaming Lips album "At War With The Mystics"

2008-02-03T01:57:00.001+05:30

I love listening to albums at night. It’s the silence, the darkness, the sleepiness induced defocused daze that gets us closer to that “other world”, the world where ears taste, tongues listen and eyes think, I mean our cousins living below in alternative realities and parallel senses; the world of our unconscious, the universe of our dreaming state.

In this other world albums stroke our alternative consciousnesses with their sonic canvasses, tingling our synapses, our neural networks, leaving us suspended exquisitely, blissfully, between dreaming and waking in that “other world”.

It’s the world of pure individuality, where people who could’ve been standing in queues in a bank or depressing their breaks to halts at traffic lights become lords of their universes, creators of aural dreamworlds, the world where Pink Floyd makes The Dark Side Of The Moon or Tolkien discovers Hobbits, wizards, riders of rohan confronting orcs and servants of sauron in the middle earth.

It’s the space where psychedelic guitar tones and strings can create amber glows or impassioned blues make your face grimace with their needlesharp pricks and sharpened knife slices of notes.

Try lining up Floyd’s “Brain Damage”, The Flaming Lips “My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion”, Derek & The Dominos “Layla” and Miles Davis’ “So What” one after the other and you see the individuality the deep uniqueness of our senses, our consciousnesses, our selves, our natures, our expressions. Each piece is made by a person exploring another sonic world another universe in sound which we all tap into and explore like passengers in their realm.

Maybe it fulfills that wonderful Russell essay where he says: “In action, in desire, we must submit perpetually to the tyranny of outside forces, but in thought, in aspiration we are free, free, from our fellow men free from the petty planet on which our bodies impotently crawl, free, even while we live, from the tyranny of death.”

How do these creators live in their day to day life, when they conduct business, order at restaurants, write cheques, analyze their pay checks, fill application forms; are they conscious of those other universes they’ve created, the parallel worlds they’ve created. Or is it blanked out in the daylight senses of singular, uniform reality.

Perhaps that’s why I like listening to albums at night.

Holding Still

2008-01-17T21:08:00.000+05:30

A character initialled D..... thought these one January night in 2008 in his ephemeral 5 minutes life as an imaginary character.

'Flying, circling, cartwheeling atop the peaks, pitfalls and paralysis of fantasies I dipped into depression with buzzing malarial mosquito halos around my head. I was standing by a road under a sodium light. Buses passed by with long intervening gaps of silence. Sometimes I randomly lifted my hand and caught meaning and purpose, opened my palms, stared diffused as puropse slipped, slithered through my fingers. I was left only with memories: Why did Coldplay add blue-black beauty to solitary, late night train journeys on Mumbai locals? How did trance music notes become an elusive breeze which disappeared across a Goa sea before I opened my eyes to them? Why did late night literature add to my life, butressing my gooey brain with cloudy canvasses of pictures, characters, eras and thoughts. How could I never hold anything? Hold moments, thoughts, guitar notes, jobs. Here I was, standing knee deep in the sticky swamp of middle age with the smell of camphor-like, yellow, jaundiced death on the other shore, still looking for meaning and something to hold, to still the endless buzz of events in a dizzying, spinning, perplexing, death-ward life.

Bleak

2008-01-01T07:48:00.000+05:30

Bleak, ...... have you seen a drop of water fall on a black letter of a page, the letter gets smudged, focussed black turns into vague, all encompassing, many shaded grey. Bleak and diluted, this new year's sunshine is muddy, puddle-like for me but without the liquid that puddles possess that give them their buoyancy, instead arched out against the sky is a wallpaper of muddy, eternally spread, lacklustre, life/humus/dead-leaves-sucking, shitty pale brown!

Bleak! Sitting alone on this laptop, a freezing delhi morning, rubbing my ice-like hands on the sandpaper stubble on my chin, my nose feels swollen and my eyes a grey-gossamer like insubstantial and distant pain as though it emanated from the furthest tunnel recesses of the eye softly billowing and stretching, slowly breaking into threads in front.

Maybe I'll talk to her mother, dressed in her skirt, anglicized beyond history, mannered beyond contemporary thought, stuck in the paperback, sticky pages of a novel about the Raj, perhaps The Far Pavillions or Heat & Dust, maybe The Jewel In The Crown. A non-existent England. She sits with creamers and tea cosy's which belie and decieve her enormously Indian interests. Perhaps I shall talk to her of shesher kobita. Perhaps her daughter and I should have retained our purposeless, wondering purity, lost now in the orders for toilet rolls, clean bathrooms, tv shows, driver's timings and cleaning cupboards......

Funnily, she understood, she smiled, and her eyes empathetically brown searched mine and smiled when I exclaimed my predicament with the metaphor of the smudged letter on a page. Depression, our depression! She smiled at my way of talking almost like she was falling in love with me herself, a paramour's empathy, my wife's mother, puritanical and English, falling in love, a flutter, incestuous, crazy.

My imagination! She's pours me tea and we chat some more, sitting in her garden, it's time for me to leave, I have to drive, spend this new year's first day driving through muddy and cold Delhi.

Strange notes of isolated and crazed jazz musicians lost in sepia or black and white, brilliantined hair, smoky venues, play in my head, Bud Powell, Charlie Parker, Thelonius Monk, mad, staccato, autistic notes. I walk past my car and lie on the grass, stare up as dew soaks into my jacket, soaking freezing dew, my jacket, stained with the earth, above my freezing back are my eyes facing the sky, no human world in ther horizon, only sky, the eternal, grey, muddy wallpaper, the lamb fleece clouds, shimmering and bearded ones, scattered and scrambled ones.

I get lost so easily in clouds, push my head into them the way childhood was spent pushing one's head into the clouds in the enchanted wood of enid blytons. So difficult to return, so fearful of the fear of getting lost of going mad in childhood day dreams.

Bleak! I rub my harsh, alien stubble again, run a finger across my chapped lips and the arid terrain of my frozen body. Feel the freezing earth smell of my jacket. I'm lost and arid this new year's day but around the aridity are the warmth of day dreams and day long drives, of muscial snapshots and dew smelling earth, the warmth around alienation, the blue sea water around an island. I smile and feel bleak,.... smilingly bleak!