Monkey menace hits Delhi (December 2007)
The national capital is always on alert due to possible terror attacks.
However, the President’s House, ministerial bungalows, the courts, temples, markets and other well-fortressed places are on guard against another potent threat --- gangs of marauding monkeys attacking humans that have turned chilling in the recent past.
In October, the deputy mayor of Delhi, S S Bajwa died after being attacked by several monkeys in the morning at the terrace of his house in a residential locality of East Delhi.
Last month a-lone monkey, over one night, attacked and injured at least 25 people, including children and one woman seriously, at a residential colony, again in east Delhi.
Wild rumors floated about a disguised serial killer at large, though it turned out that the deranged animal was stressed about separation from his family brood.
An assessment of the fear factor can be gauged when a petrified Priyanka Gandhi, daughter of Congress party President Sonia Gandhi reportedly called up civic authorities recently when a monkey strayed into her house at the New Delhi bungalow region, a particular favorite of the simians due to the greenery and open areas. Priyanka is the mother of two young kids.
It is not that monkeys in Delhi, estimated to number anywhere between 10,000-to-25000, have not been in focus in the past.
There have been some unfortunate biting incidents, snatchings from pedestrians, but the talk has been more about their naughty and usually good-humored behavior.
As a matter of fact Delhi has always contained a fair sprinkling of cows and monkeys, considered as sacred by the pre-dominant Hindu community. The animals have freely roamed the roads and elsewhere for sometime.
Among the many Gods that Hindus worship, include the elephant God Ganesh and monkey God Hanuman, considered as the embodiment of strength; the cow is referred as Mata (mother) due to the milk she gives.
The presence of monkeys has also been seen as a positive example of peaceful co-existence in Delhi.
Thus, it is with relish that the media has reported in the past that monkeys residing in the big ministerial complexes of north and south block (that adjoin the President’s House) repeatedly run off with secret files, apart from lunch boxes, from the federal home and defense ministry.
The government has thus hired the services of a bigger monkey specimen called white langurs, unlike the smaller brown rhesus variety that proliferate, that are now tied to vantage points around large office buildings.
The langurs have been quite effective in keeping the others at bay, though the very intelligent brown monkeys have figured out that they are tied and try and work around it. The solution has been to vary the length of the rope to keep the confusion.
Any Indian visiting a temple would also vouch about monkeys, carefully monitored by the locals, who specialize in running off with hand bags of women and spectacles and mobile phones from anyone.
The stealer monkey sits at a high vantage point and observes his master negotiate, promptly alighting once money, that conveniently has to be in higher dimension paper notes and not coins for the monkey’s recognition, changes hands. The stolen article is never damaged.
All of this is of course taken in good spirit, as Indians are known to be tolerant towards animals --- especially cows, monkeys and elephants, as long as they don’t cause trouble. Street dogs that abound are loved and pampered, without any religious connotations.
However, rapid urbanization of Delhi, including deforestation, frenetic construction activities and exponential rise in vehicular traffic, has created a situation of acute man-animal conflict, leading to stressful existence and abnormal behaviors.
Apart from increased numbers, wildlife experts speak about destruction of natural habitats as the root of the over-crowding.
The approximate 50,000 cows and buffalos that live on Delhi roads are thus a major nuisance now, causing innumerable accidents. There have been incidents of bulls goring people to death, while street dogs have attacked and killed children.
The monkeys too have nowhere to go and nothing to eat as the trees have been cut for expressway, metro and housing projects.
In the recent past, Delhi courts have been issuing strictures against civic authorities, following appeals by residents, to rid the city of the monkey menace. Many lawyers and their clients have been bitten within the various court premises itself.
A police officer, pestered by residents, was recently quoted to say that cops were quite helpless in catching monkeys given the wildlife protection statutes. Also, if a monkey does unfortunately get killed/injured in the process, it could create a religious furor that no political party in India will like to risk.
In 2005, frustrated with the ineptitude of the government on the matter, the Delhi court announced a cash prize equivalent to US$50 for every cow caught and delivered to an appointed government agency.
This created a mad ``cowboy’’ rush that fizzled out, as there was no way of ensuring that the caught cows were strays belonging to the city. Also animal rights activists quickly pointed at the imminent torture of the poor animals.
The Delhi government has, however, woken up to the alarming monkey attacks and allocated a budget of Rs 10 million to snare them. As per official figures about 750 monkeys have been caught in the capital this year, following prescribed wildlife norms and released in adjoining forests.
There is a big task in hand given the total numbers and officially the government has only five catchers.
Yet, perhaps for the first time, the High Court did recognize efforts recently and praised the Delhi government for also finally deciding on a sanctuary at a mining area close by to house the caught monkeys.
However, it is not only Delhi’s street animals that are fighting for their space. Humans are prey too as road rage is a major problem that harassed commuters in Delhi have to face, reflecting higher levels of intolerance.
Apart from nightmarish traffic jams giving to frayed tempers, psychiatric studies point towards new money, high growth, aspirations and the attendant rat race that has instilled an over-aggressive streak that is spilling over on the streets.
As per police estimates over 10,000 road rage incidents, ranging from verbal abuse to physical threats take place in Delhi everyday.
In the recent past two people have been killed following skirmishes on the roads of Delhi. A property consultant was pulled out of his car by a mob of motorcycle borne riders and beaten to death, following a minor brush. A father of two was killed for coming in the way of a motorcyclist.
This week, in an unprecedented incident that harks to the serious situation in US schools, two schoolboys allegedly shot dead their classmate at an up market school in technology hub Gurgaon that adjoins Delhi.
Given the aberrant behavior of people in cities, it is pertinent to ask whether it is only the monkeys to blame.
The cows that jump New Delhi’s traffic (August 2005)
Greed often scores over all else, including religion. The past few days India’s capital city New Delhi has been witness to a peculiar sight --- cowboys (many on motorcycles) with lassos spanning the city to round up cattle.
The Indian version of the Pamplona Bull run has happened following a cash award of $ 50 per cow caught, announced by the Delhi high court to rid the city of the traffic menace.
The court has been exhorting the Delhi government for quite some time to rid the roads of cows, but without much success. It is estimated that over 50,000 cows and buffaloes inundate the roads along with hordes of monkeys, camels, pigs and stray dogs, causing traffic jams and accidents.
Traffic routinely comes to a halt on highways to allow animals walk, sleep, shit and procreate. Several animals are injured with carcasses often lying on the roads.
For years, foreign visitors to New Delhi never fail to comment on cows that roam Delhi roads freely. Several foreign dignitaries, businessmen, film stars, pop singers, sportspeople who have visited the country have said that they never expected to see cows on Indian roads, especially the national capital. Somehow, it does not fit into India’s image as a global supplier of scientific manpower, including handling computers and software.
Cows and buffaloes can be spotted everywhere --- at the busy Ring Road, the Race Course Road where the Prime Minister lives, Shanti Path which runs through the diplomatic enclave. They graze the lawns that crisscross the wide thoroughfares of India Gate and the Rashtrapati Bhavan where the President of India resides.
There has been an intelligence report that stray dogs that live next to the Prime Minister’s residence are a potential hazard as they move in and out of the high security zone, given their friendly access to the security guards.
Any one of the dogs can be stitched up with a remote-controlled bomb. Fed up with stray dogs that bite, the government of the north eastern state Arunachal Pradesh has ordered a shoot to kill when sighted. Still, not as bad as London though. Bulls in rage have gored several people to death in New Delhi.
The existence of cows in particular have been due to several factors --- as Delhi as developed, several erstwhile villages have fallen in the ambit of metropolitan areas. Land that the cows and buffaloes roamed freely to graze was converted. Owners have no choice but to let their cattle out to fend for themselves. There are also several instances of cattle being left loose once they are old and useless.
But, the one reason that authorities not only in Delhi, but several cities and towns of India are unable to launch a crusade to rid the cities of vagabond cattle is religion. Cows remain a very touchy subject due to the religious sentiments attached.
The animal is revered by the Hindus and addressed as Gau Mata (meaning, the cow is like a mother). Indian history has several instances of Hindu-Muslim riots erupting over cows being slaughtered, sometimes deliberately to incite violence.
Hindus do not eat cow meat, unlike lamb or chicken that is slaughtered. The latter are usually not seen on the streets.
But, apart from religion there are other factors that complicate the task, not least the animal rights activist who make it a point to criticize any government action or inaction. Indians in general are animal lovers and often adopt several stray dogs and cows, putting up a stiff resistance to municipal authorities who try and remove them.
Further, Indians are notorious about flouting laws. Laws have been enacted against known infringements as is the norm internationally. There are fines for noise pollution, littering, talking on the cell phone while driving, not wearing seat belts…Even one against peeing in public which was strengthened after a person was found easing his bladder on the wall of the house of the municipal commissioner of Delhi.
Some analysts have said that apart from a general lack of discipline Indians break these minor laws as it gives them a sense of freedom and doing what they feel like in keeping with democratic traditions.
It is often observed that Indians living abroad who follow rules to the book, change dramatically when in India, off loading empty ice cream/pizza/cola packets even as they drive. Despite the existence of over 250 free public urinals in New Delhi, most prefer to pee on the roadside.
From time to time the authorities try and clamp down, but the task is humongous given the population and cannot be sustained over a period of time. Nobody has yet been hauled up for peeing in public.
However, to the credit of the New Delhi authorities, they have found solutions to some of the other animal problems. A couple of Langur’s (bigger sized white monkeys) are tied everyday to the forecourts of the Rashtrapati Bhavan and the adjoining north and south block that houses the main government (including prime minister and home minister) as well as military offices.
The Langur’s keep a check on the smaller Indian brown rhesus monkeys that are a menace in the area, biting government officials, running away with secret files, entering the inner precincts of offices and the President’s quarters.
Another practice by government offices, especially the Income Tax and the Delhi Development Authority (that deals with land allotment and development in the Capital) has been to assiduously and officially cultivate cats. This is to keep away mice from nibbling the reams of paperwork that has to be stored, in the face of slow computerization of government offices.
The latest order on cows with the attendant cash awards seems to have caught the imagination of the people and could also be a success. The response has been akin to hordes logging onto game shows, lucky dips, quiz contests with fabulous awards. But, a hitch has been reported as few people have been buying cheap cows from anywhere to win the higher cash award. The authorities now insist that there should be some proof of where the cattle belong. Such paper work for stray animals is very difficult.
However, the court order on cows is a reflection of the systemic changes that are taking place in New Delhi in contrast to major cities such as Mumbai. Post the unprecedented rains in Mumbai, the city has been under siege. Delhi has changed in the last few years --- the roads have been ramped up, flyovers built, an underground metro is in place, buses use clean fuel and illegal development of land curtailed.
The difference between the two cities is that Delhi has its own elected government just like the major cities of the world with elected mayors. Mumbai’s interests (as also Bangalore in Karnataka or Chennai in Tamil Nadu) are diluted as the responsibility is with the government of the state.
India has a long way to go. Comparisons of Mumbai with Shanghai or Gurgaon with Singapore are quite far fetched. For now, it is back to the cowboys.
When dogs don’t bark or bite
Dogs and cats are often close to seat of power. President George W Bush and the first lady Laura recently welcomed a new addition to the family: a Scottish terrier puppy named Miss Beazley.
In keeping with pet dignity, family wishes and political correctness, it was White House spokesman Steve McClellan who announced that the puppy is Bush's birthday gift to his wife, Laura, who turned 58.
In America as also elsewhere, pets are family and merit the full introduction. Born October 28, Miss Beazley will arrive at the White House just before the Christmas holiday, McClellan said.
Divulging more on her, in keeping with White House traditions related to pets, McClellan said she was named after a dinosaur in a popular children's book and the puppy's father is Barney's half-brother.
In true inclusive style it was mentioned that the first family comprises a Scottish terrier named Barney and a black cat named India, apart from daughters Miss Jenna and Miss Barbara.
One of the first family's dogs, an English Springer spaniel Spot, died in February, his obituary very much part of the official White House website.
Dogs and cats are given the importance in this part of the world as well. One of the most famous dog pictures relate to Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf Musarraf who was quick to realize that opinions in the west count and so does a soft side to a military leader.
A few years back while his troops were busy arresting incumbent Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and company in a bloodless coup, Musharraf promptly unleashed his two friendly Pekinese dogs among western journalists who assembled at his residence. It made the right impact.
There was levity in the reports that followed as media persons began to connect with the General. Leading newspapers talked about Musarraf's Pekinese connection, in an obvious reference to China. Every dog has his day, so did Musarraf's, who knew better than anybody that dog diplomacy does work.
Dogs have for long caught popular imagination and the media here takes special care to portray them.
Former US President Bill Clinton nuzzling his cocker spaniel Buddy was the stuff that complete American families were made of, until of course the Monica Lewinsky affair blew Clinton’s doggedness.
George Bush Sr’s, the late Millie still remains familiar and the current Bush dog family owes their lineage to her.
Here in India, politicians are not as smart as Musharraf to tilt dog diplomacy towards their end and prefer to parade nubile film stars when they want to present a happy picture and attract attention, especially prior to elections.
However, beat journalists do recall former Congress president Sitaram Kesri's Spitz that fluttered in and out of the view of television cameras when he was at the helm of affairs; former defense minister George Fernandes loves his Alsatians while another politician of note P A Sangma is proud of his German Shepard’s.
Uma Bharti, who is causing a headache to her Bharatiya Janata Party bosses, dotes on her Alsatian.
``Dogs have been domesticated by man for years,’’ says psychiatrist Sanjay Chugh, ``they appeal to a vast section of the population cutting across all boundaries. They represent a gentle side and appeal to the temporal part of the brain.
They manage to divert attention from the real issues as also happened in the Musharraf case,’’ he adds.
Sticking with animals, journalists doing the rounds here cannot ignore the couple of Langur’s (bigger sized white monkeys) that remain tied to the forecourts of the Rashtrapati Bhavan (where the Indian President resides) and the adjoining north and south block that houses the main government as well as military offices.
The Langur’s have been brought in to keep a check on the smaller Indian brown rhesus monkeys that are a menace in the area, biting government officials and running away with secret files.
The smaller and smarter monkeys have realized that the trained Langur’s are tied to a long leash and never miss an opportunity of a good tease from a safe distance. But, the Langur’s have been successful in keeping the monkey’s away from the inner precincts of offices and the President’s quarters.
Another novel practice by government offices, especially the Income Tax and the Delhi Development Authority (that deals with land allotment and development in the Capital) has been to assiduously and officially cultivate cats in their midst.
This is to keep away mice from nibbling the reams of paperwork that has to be stored, in the face of slow computerization of government offices.
However, like Musharraf and true to their label of reflecting the true Indian mindsets, Hindi movies have for long exploited the dog sentiment. In the blockbuster Hum Apke Hain Kaun, it was the family Pomeranian that finally delivered the most important letter that talked of the true emotions of the heroine just as she was about to be married off to the wrong guy.
The audience lapped it up, as this is what's expected of dogs in any case and the director absolutely connected with such a finale.
One can recall another movie Teri Meherbanian starring a Doberman and a lead Bollywood actor Jackie Shroff, which turned out to be a hit; critics said that the real star was Jackie the dog (his nomenclature in the movie) and not the other way round.
Indeed, in this age of multi-media, the right image forms a strong arsenal. Dogs and pets can go a long way in conveying the same message. Indian diplomats, political spin masters for so long embroiled in verbal nuances to draft the correct policy documents for their bosses, could take a leaf out of Musharraf, US President’s and Bollywood directors. Diplomacy and more with dogs does work.
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
My Tryst With Technology
Why I kicked Facebook? (August 2009)
I have been on Facebook for sometime now. Others keep up with Twitter and Orkut too.
Not too long back I followed the numbers on my friend’s list as closely as stock quotes, while keeping track of others rising figures. It was competitive.
Some mentioned to me, ``you have so many (friends) only, I have many more.’’ There were egos involved.
I believe actor Ashton Kutcher has more than a million-list and keeps his fans humored by anecdotes and private pictures of his wife Demi Moore, sometimes in her underwear. My wife would kill me.
For me touching the 100 friends mark was a big day, even as I remain logged now with 250 odd people comprising extended family, close friends, others regurgitated from the past, many cousins, faint acquaintances, some I might have bumped into anywhere, including bank relationship managers and more I just don’t know.
Till some time back, I kept digging for more people I could know.
Today, I am bored of FB as the novelty has worn out. I would prefer to wash my car any day without uploading pictures of me washing the car.
In the past, I grew out of pornography as it is no use watching others having all the fun.
And, I have grown out of FB as I felt it limited my mind, my life – thinking process, work and creativity – which instead focused on buttressing my FB profile.
Perhaps it works fine for big people such as Ashton and other celebrities who need to be in the glare due to marketing and sales needs.
I felt like a vacuous Page 3 party person flashing a funny pose or wearing a short skirt on skinny legs to somehow get pass the editor’s muster and onto the papers the next day.
Except on FB you are your own boss --- and people get to see what you want them to see.
So, I took pictures of places visited subconsciously keeping FB in mind, faking a big smile once on a trip to desert state Rajasthan in height of summer, even as my brain boiled inside.
I perhaps took a holiday or two extra to keep up with the photo updates
In FB everybody has to be having good time like the P3 people, otherwise, he/she would not be on FB. You don’t see too many hospital pictures except for newborns, all very cute, as long as the parents get to do the potty washing.
My ideas also brimmed to keep the new status messages exciting to elicit instant reactions. I was disappointed if they did not.
I even grew a mustache and put up the pictures. I socialized more and met new people to get them onto my FB list.
I took and re-took innumerable quizzes until my smile or sex appeal matched as closest to Tom Cruise and IQ Einstein.
There was even a brief period when I avoided some friends as they could no longer add to the friend list numbers, while I already knew whatever I might have wanted to know about them, courtesy FB.
I requested those who did not FB to begin an account right away. Ideally, I should have been paid by the FB promoters for the free branding.
Today I FB barely five minutes a day, if I do log in. The only comment I have made in the last few weeks is clicking the Like button. Even this is more infrequent.
The whole world seems to be doing the same things --- holding a drink, in the Jacuzzi or at the beach, catching the standard FB moment.
I am sick of looking at pictures of holidays, marriages, the always adorable kids, birthdays, official functions, foreign visits, mum and dad when they were young and grandparents in their youth.
All of this was, of course very exciting at one time as it unfolded the world of so many I had interacted in the past.
To begin with, it was good to know about them until it became all too predictable. It was like a reality show on TV that had lost its punch.
At the same time the curiosity about catching up with an old school mate in real was lost.
Many of them, ex-colleagues, classmates, might have formed part of my daily routine at some point. But, life moves on and a new bunch of relationships develop that takes precedence.
As a matter of fact, I have knocked off a couple of good friends from my list as there was not much to speak about after debating an issue the whole day on FB.
Today, my FB account is more like an online diary which gets automatically updated, should the need arise to get in touch with somebody. This is useful.
But, I don’t look out for names I may or may not know or send out requests to add to my friend list or take off on an exotic holiday to put up the pictures.
I prefer to wash my car any day.
Without a Cell Phone (February 2004)
It was the day my cell phone conked off that I achieved nirvana. It is time I have spent most blissfully --- no SMS beeps, no telemarketing or business calls, no unnecessary friends, family and wife.
I play golf the way I should watching the greens, no walking out of a movie, no stepping into potholes and people, no driving with one hand, the most leisurely bath and breakfast, even making love.
The body of my erstwhile cell phone still rests on my table, a mangle of plastic, fibre and rest of components. It took a fall from the second floor on the cement outside letting out one final beep before going dead.
I watched it bounce and break on the lighted ground and instantly felt that a body part had been dissociated, waiting for it to quiver like the severed tail of a lizard.
I wanted to run down the stairs and check whether it still functioned. But,
I stayed where I was, trying to figure out the position of the disintegrated pieces. In fact, I felt happy in a strange way and recalled images of Cassius Clay in his movie when he sinks his Olympic medal into the river. It was good riddance.
But this was a moment. I was alarmed as it was late night when my phone met its demise. I mentally re-arranged my next day’s assignments for the most important task of fixing or buying a new cell phone. I felt desperate.
I was expecting calls --- there was a lunch engagement with my brother, a friend I had to meet, an appointment with an American Express agent.
Back on my table that night my partially re-joined cell phone looked like a dead relative, who was walking and talking a moment ago. It had always been around, inside my shirt pocket while driving or on my computer table that I could spot it with the corner of my eye.
One was subconsciously always conscious of it coming alive any moment, blaring the latest ring tone downloaded from the Internet. It was not to be any longer. Did it make me feel happy?
It did, very soon. I have already started to treasure the first few hours of existence without the cell phone, with nostalgia. I follow Deepak Chopra’s meditation techniques, being one with the universe with the mind and spirit conjoined with divinity.
The silence that enveloped my immediate existence post-cell phone was similar. Those few hours I did not need Chopra as my mind was on automatic rest mode.
The next morning after the fall turned out to be unusual. I went for my usual walk and actually listened to a spiritual sermon by an elderly co-walker without golfing mates doing the rounds calling in to say, ``birdie, eagle.’’
Breakfast was even better. No reminders from bosses, editors of magazines and newspapers of re-scheduled deadlines. One editor got to me four hours late on mail; she began by writing that she was trying my number the entire morning. She wanted a story early.
It ruined my day, but could have destroyed my morning as well.
My wife has a theory that people don’t call as often on the landline as on the cell phone. This is because a landline can involve a chain of people and one may not be there, whereas a cell call is direct. So, a person will not call on a landline unless it is really urgent. On the cell phone calls come in on a missed putt.
She is right.
I have got back to the people who matter and told them to e-mail or call on the landline. The telemarketers do that in any case, but now they get me only when I am there.
I have also realized that most calls I made were not necessary, specially the ones when I am driving or waiting for a movie to begin. There has been one urgent situation for which I went to a phone booth.
I had forgotten about phone booths. Having just watched uninterrupted the movie Phone Booth, it was rather eerie stepping into one, but nobody pointed a gun at me. And to better the experience, no cell call interrupted my booth call. For the rest, I wait till I get to my office phone.
I am out of cell phone for over a week now. Do I miss it? No. Has life changed for the worse or has it affected my business? Not in the least deal. People have come to expect the new time frame.
I check my mail in the morning and evening for replies and propositions. Everyone fits into my routine, rather than the other way round.
There is no spurt of the moment rescheduling as the time gap is accounted for. Friends know when I am available on landline and call accordingly. My wife had a problem initially, but we watched Phone Booth together and she didn’t have to fill out the parts I missed.
She is coming round to the non-existence of my cell phone, probably even loving it, as lovemaking too has a new ring without the ring tones.
I am not going in for another cell phone in a hurry.
Technology and Terror (September 2004)
Can cell phones be a threat to personal security of important people?
We know about constant new research that cellular waves affect the brain, but this is about security and the fear of terror among us.
The debate in India emanated from a group of prominent journalists who, like most others, do the rounds of the various press interactions of people in the news.
It so happened that during the recent visit of the Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the immaculate security detail did not involve surrendering of cell phones at the security counter outside, to gain entry for an address by the visiting dignitary.
This raised the eyebrows of seasoned hacks. As things stand, cell phones are banned from the presence of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani and leader of Opposition Sonia Gandhi.
They are not allowed inside Parliament, the Race Course Road where the PM resides and the Home Ministry where Advani attends office.
The journalists, constantly harassed by the long queues at the cell phone deposit counters, were quick to point out that no such limitations exists while meeting George W Bush at the White House or Tony Blair at 10, Downing Street.
Even if one did not believe in the efficacy of US and UK security Sharon’s visit was the final stamp of disapproval as nobody does safety better than the Israelis.
Besides, it was argued, if cell phones are such a threat, there is no such bar on their use when defense minister George Fernandes or foreign minister
Jaswant Singh are addressing the media or attending a function. One would imagine they are equally important with a similar threat perception.
Many delved into the reasoning behind such a happening. There is no statute that exists, except for a report by the Intelligence Bureau a few years ago that there was a possibility of a bomb being set off by a call from a cell phone. It could have been a landline as well. Security personnel too do not seem to offer a plausible argument.
Some point out that in the past terrorists used cell phones to co-ordinate attacks. The Indian government has been intermittently banning the use of cell phones and STD facilities in terror infested Jammu & Kashmir.
During the 2001, December 11 attack on Indian Parliament terrorists were in touch with the masterminds over the cellular phones they possessed, with records showing calls to Pakistan and Dubai.
But, this argument does not hold good for personal security as calls can easily be made by stepping outside the hall with the VIP already present, detailing his/her movements. The cat was out of the bag when a senior official commented that nobody wanted to take the responsibility of lifting the ban, if an incident did happen after such a move.
Not that the issue we are talking about is a national disaster, but it sure is inconvenient and a reflection of how things stand in the government. But, more importantly it is an indication of the fear of terror that has ingrained in our psyche as well as the system.
In an age when technology advances at unimaginable speed, there is also a concomitant perception that all gadgetry can be dangerous.
It is witnessed at airports. A person with a cell phone is seen as a potential time bomb and a laptop is a fitted missile, as vouched by a friend who complained of the innumerable instances she had to switch on and off her computer as well as detach the alkaline battery.
Similar is the case with cell phones, though not as bad.
It goes without saying that terror and technology are at loggerheads --- one making existence seamless, the other inserting the roadblocks, literally.
The difference, ironically, arises out of a similarity between the two.
Technology is about the unknown, just as the convoluted mind of a terrorist is.
The terrorist today is seen as a high-tech being who ruthlessly twists know-how to suit his ends. The image of technology has taken a beating due to terror.
It is the same reason that Sikhs are mistaken to belong to the ilk of Osama
Bin Laden and assaulted in the USA. The problem is not being a Sikh, but that the beard has come to signify terror.
Hindus in India shave off their beards before traveling abroad for fear of being persecuted. They change their names if there is even a remote Muslim phonetic. It is the same reason that students from Asian countries heading for the west are perceived with suspicion. A low flying aero plane is a threat; a power failure is assumed to be a precursor to a terror strike.
When Indian officials grapple with explanations of why cellular phones are not allowed, are they to blame? In an age when security is constantly breached by terror attacks, can they withdraw a rule that has been in place, without understanding fully how a terrorist behaves or plans his/her attack?
Nobody imagined 9/11 until it happened.
Who knows what (mis)-use a cell phone or airwaves can be put to?
Just Musing
My Visit To America (March 2010)
A first visit to America will leave impressions. My recent two week’s in New York, Washington and a bit of the middle US states surely had some impact, which is as follows:
Big America: Unlike Europe or even south-east Asia, America is about size. It is all very big, except perhaps the cash-strapped Delta and Continental planes in the domestic circuit, with little leg or head space and hardly any in-flight service worth a mention, except some orange or tomato juice.
Yet, there are no skyscrapers like in Manhattan or Times Square, airports are sprawling whether Detroit or Houston, the museums and memorials are grand in Washington, Texas and Oklahoma are about big cars, roads, stores, schools and homes.
The groceries and Walmart approximate warehouses. The variety is immense, the deals very good and the quality top class, even if a bit of the items are imported from China and some India.
Such a range is not available back home.
The food portions are inexpensive and quite liberal, perhaps in keeping with the general girth of the average American. Maybe, there is a contributory factor of cheap food in making many Americans more than just healthy.
In India, food portions are small, getting smaller and highly priced, even compared to food courts in south east Asian countries such as Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand.
But, all of this is puny compared to an American repast. A six dollar breakfast comprised sausages, toast, pancakes, eggs, juice, coffee with add on butter, honey syrup and jam.
It was perhaps one rare occasion when I couldn’t finish a meal I paid for.
I didn’t ask for the food to be packed as there is an extra charge. This was unusual.
Security: The 9/11 fear factor plays out at the airports almost a decade later, even as the long queues reminds one of some of the chaos of regular Indian life. They strip you to the bare minimum, leaving nothing to chance.
It is just shirt and pants and they won’t let you through if the metal detector beeps, passing under the machine any number of times.
Belts, wallets, shoes have to be taken off, gadgets, laptops and jackets put in separate holds. There are plenty of screaming instructions.
I tried to smuggle in water in the hand bag. They threw it away and put the luggage in line again.
This is a process that has been applied to visiting Indian ministers and dignitaries as well, much to their chagrin.
The only silver lining about all of this is that there is hardly any physical frisking as in India. People have issues with this at times.
In America though, there is an ongoing debate about new X-Ray machines that will run an automatic body search.
There is a lot of chatter about it among travelers. Many, especially the women, say it is invasion of privacy. Maybe it is.
Yet, the Americans are getting it right as there have been no terror attacks in USA since September 11, 2001. In India, the militants strike at will.
Also, there is no doubt that a particular community is in focus, even if it is wrong to brand a population due to the wrong doings of some.
I saw two individuals taken away for ``special screening’’ at different airports. ``Is this because of my name,’’ one retorted. It clearly was.
There are no elaborate processes in trains, though domestic travel is as expensive as traveling by air, unlike India where rail fares are much cheaper.
But, it’s the planes that the Americans seem to guard the most and with good reason.
Indians Will Be Indians: Indians like to quibble, argue and quarrel, which some say is a sign of a healthy functional democracy. This is, however, also because back home nobody follows systems, rules and order.
Every matter can be turned around to an individual’s whim, position, contacts, phone calls and money power.
In America there is homogeneity of usual existence, like not breaking lines, following traffic rules, proper parking and honking only when necessary.
Indians generally try to be in best behavior when abroad. They pee inside loos and don’t litter.
But, sometimes it gets too much. Like when my return flight got delayed due to a blizzard.
We shouted and abused the airline management. Security was called in and they warned ``this is America sir, you could be arrested.’’
The officials were asked to shut up and the shouting continued, even as women with children in arms joined in the ruckus.
Other air carriers faced no such problems. The passengers patiently waited and slept off in corners. The Indians, meanwhile, muttered through the delay and huddled in corners to bitch and plot. They regrouped and fought about inadequate food vouchers.
Land of Opportunity: Despite the recession, America remains a land of dreams and progress.
I witnessed the same during my visa process where I met a gentleman from Punjab, an affluent state, whose application was unfortunately rejected.
He did not mind it too much.
``I will come and try again and again despite the high fees. It is a family tradition and an investment. Many of my folks are in America this way. They went on tourist visa, like I will and live and work there illegally. I am young and can earn lots of money to send back home as the dollar can convert to a lot of rupees.’’
Of course, the American dream can get more desperate, with many reports of human trafficking wherein people are duped of big amounts of money or transported in inhuman conditions packed in ships and boats.
I did sense some of the caution and perhaps hostility, given the economic slow down and general sentiments against outsourcing in USA.
The suspicious immigration officer had a friendly tone as long as I was defined a tourist who would obviously spend some money during my stay.
I was, however, sternly told that any work related pursuit away from the purpose of my visit would result in instant deportation.
Not very friendly, I must say, but I guess that’s the way it has to be in times of terrorism and job losses.
Toilet Training
There is, however, an issue about American toilets that many Indian vehemently complain about.
There is only provision of tissue paper and no water. Many of us find this dirty and also irreligious. Some find this reason enough not to marry an American. I do not differ much with these views.
``Indian public toilets are dirty, but there is water at least,’’ one fellow traveler said ``Otherwise one can just go in the open carrying a bottle of water.’’
Road Sense
There is also an issue about crossing roads. Vehicles move on the right side, while in India on the left.
One is practiced about watching the front right while walking across a street rather than keeping an eye on the left. This can disorient and has resulted in accidents.
Luckily, there is respect for the pedestrian in western countries, who have the right of way. In India, it is the other way round. The drivers don’t care.
Still I almost got knocked down once in Oklahoma and also caused bit of a jam as a lady driver waited for me to cross elsewhere.
I was not aware she was on my left. This can be very dangerous as the big American cars can sure cause some damage to the human body.
Chasing the Indian monsoon (June 2004)
It is like a strip tease.
The audience: Indians, browbeaten by the summer heat that unfailingly crosses 40 degrees this time of the year, raising temperatures and tempers, everywhere.
The performer: the Indian monsoon that tantalizes till the very end.
The drummers: officials from the MET office, who play it safe by predicting a below normal rainfall, each year. If they get it right, they are safe. If not, nobody bothers what they said as the rains arrive.
For the populace calculations and speculations happen in an overdrive.
There is desperation in the air, an example, the cases of road rage that show a remarkable rise during this period, with Delhi one of the worst affected.
In the past, Sunita Chadha, a mother of three girls was shot dead on a road by a group of young boys, short-tempered in any case, more short-fused due to the heat. In another instance a truck driver crushed a man leaving wife and two children as survivors. There are many more ghastly encounters that happen each year, only in summer as the heat and humidity turns unbearable.
Meanwhile, Indians await the monsoons, like drought-stricken animals of Africa, beseeching the sky-gods to oblige.
"India has a traveling monsoon, and it travels fast," says Alexander Frather
in his delightful travelogue Chasing the Indian Monsoon.
But never fast enough. A couple of squalls, a pitter-patter of raindrops, as is happening now, only raise the expectancy.
These are false alarms, the audience roars in anticipation, as the winds of change happen to be just another flap of the impending climax.
``This is pre-monsoon humidity, I can feel the low pressure, it smells different, notice how much I am sweating,’’ is the comment in grimy public places, air-conditioned offices and plush cool plazas, which feel the same, the excess demand for power resulting in a permanent tripping of transformers.
In the recent past Indians high on incomes have not helped matters by buying more and more air-conditioners that guzzle power. Power generation controlled by the government woefully lags the rising demand.
A readymade excuse is the statement every year this time, by somebody who matters in the Electricity Board, explaining the reasons for non-existent power for months during these months - "The sudden temperature drop and water seepage due to the rains, resulting in transformers going bust."
The MET office is the only succor. There could be a train crash, India could announce peace with Pakistan, Bush could announce an attack on Iraq or catch Saddam in his underwear, but editors find space every day in newspapers and TV on the MET office info, which is usually a play-safe denial: ``No, no, no --- the raindrops are not the monsoon, just a disturbance.’’
There is a collecting moan cursing the Gods. The only sure facts are: ``last year’s record of the all time high at this time of the year has been broken. It was 45 degrees, it is 46.’’
There is the speculation on dates, with even the satta (unorganized gambling) market getting into the fray, given the cricket off-season. It will be June 23, an unsuspecting official may say as an aside, only to find himself splashed prime time in the evening.
"It's hit Maharashtra, swept Gujarat, Rajasthan too, it is hovering around
Haryana," say reporters from anywhere in the country, with TV producers dispatching their camera teams scurrying across the land looking for an elusive black cloud in the background for a piece-to-camera.
The year 2003 was particularly difficult. The monsoon tantalized --- she arrived with a vengeance; the circumspect MET office even declared that she had unveiled her full fury.
As if to prove them wrong, she petered out, leaving most of north India in a severe drought, the worst in over a decade. Indian agriculture still depends on the rains. Though parts of Eastern India were inundated due to floods and incessant rain, one region does not make a whole monsoon.
On cue, came the declaration that the surrounding air pressure had reduced considerably, spurring speculation that most of India was heading towards a bigger drought. In August, it rained in most parts of India, with bulletins saying that fears of drought are over and the government should gear up for floods.
This was our prediction, was a Met office statement, given the reasonable margin of error this and that way, which finds no place in the media. Who cares about the MET office once it rains? The audience just claps.
Not leaving anything to chance, India’s meticulous Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has already said that the country should be prepared for drought as well as floods, as the case may be this year.
He has reason to doubt. Usually, the south-west monsoon hits Kerala by June 1, Mumbai by June 5, and Delhi around June 29. The predictions have begun. The monsoon is supposed to have arrived in south India. But, who knows.
Indeed, for most of India, the monsoon is a mother scrubbing her dirty child. The country needs a wash and the Gods know it. Months of dust and heat, on roadsides, trees and semi-burnt leaves and the faces of laborers and bus conductors, washed clean. India glistens and then chokes as the drainage too leaves a lot to be desired.
A couple of years back at Vinay Marg - a busy diplomatic highway in the Capital – next to the happening Chanakya cinema hall and the Prime Minister’s residence, a furiously driven city bus stalled, the drains spilling all around it.
A couple of days later all that was visible was the top - Bus No. 610. Yashwant Place, close by, is the site where many tourist excursions begin; the sunken Red Line bus became a stopover.
A terrific photo-op for the tourists; bus number 610 along with pictures of the Red Fort, Taj Mahal and the high rises housing information technology and multinational offices in the suburbs.
So much for Indian cities turning into a Shanghai.
The story of the bus doesn’t end here. Little boys and beggars swam around it, played on top and floated boats. The tourists could not have taken back a truer image of the Capital. The bus surfaced as the rains receded.
One little boy also got caught, sucked by a current into a manhole. This happens every year, if not Chanakyapuri, then somewhere else.
For a lady, the monsoon extracts a price. On the other hand, the blame may lie elsewhere.
An Indian Dhaba Experience
In India there are every kind of restaurants. Macdonald’s has taken root and spreading, but none beats the dhaba experience.
Till recently I lived at Chanakyapuri, which is the diplomatic area of New Delhi, the Capital of India, the same locality in which reside US ambassador to India Dr David Mulford and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Tucked a couple of kilometers away from this high-security area is a popular dhaba called the Rajinder da Dhaba, the da in the dhaba a derivation from the local dialect Punjabi, meaning that the dhaba belongs to Rajinder.
The dhaba is now run by Rajinder’s two ample sons, their dimensions by way of the enormous amounts of free chicken curry they consumed during childhood, courtesy their father’s dhaba.
Dhabas such as Rajinder number several thousands found all over India, along the highways, in little crooks and crannies of big cities and metros as they do not take up much space while giving good returns to the minimal investment.
The beat cops and municipal authorities have to be kept well oiled and happy by the owners, but they come cheap. Sometimes, even a meal a day suffices. Anything for dhaba chicken curry?
Traditionally, the dhabas are meant for tired truck drivers looking for a break from their long journeys, alongside highways. They offer cheap food, music, an open-air television and a charpoy that is a bed with a wooden structure knitted with jute strings, a tad uncomfortable but the best ventilation given the summer temperatures and erratic power situation here.
Some of the popular dhabas along the highways also provide girls who sing, dance and offer more which is illegal, but still a flourishing trade.
However, over time dhabas have come to define a culture, centered round food --- any viagra talk pales in comparison to this ultimate turn on, a blob of leg in a bowl of curry and butter, tandoori rotis, a preparation of wheat resembling pancakes on a sheet of newspaper, onions sprinkled with pungent syrup and a liberal dose of Indian masala (spices) ---- everything that goes against the spirit of new age health gurus.
The government of Punjab, one of the wealthier states of India, lists Dhabas as an attraction worth a try by tourists, except that many a foreign visitor has gone away clutching his/her stomach, given the heavy dose of masala and mustard oil. But, dhaba food can get no more Indian. Also no social barriers matter here.
The crowd at Chanakyapuri where I lived, despite backgrounds where hygiene is an important consideration, was regular to the Rajinder dhaba for years.
Once I took my girlfriend. I don’t form a general opinion based on a single episode, but the advice is that a dhaba is not the best place to date. Seema found the atmosphere a bit overwhelming. She, if I may take the liberty, belongs to the classes not the masses.
To begin with, a comment on the ambience of the Rajinder dhaba, like most others, include buzzing flies, grime, lingering muscular dogs, an envelop of fumes spewed by the traffic whizzing close by. The eating area is limited to a few wrought iron rusted tables, fixed to the ground to prevent people from hitting each other. The rest is open sky and the charred interiors of the tandoor, a huge clay stove filled with charcoal to roast the meat or prepare the rotis.
I grew up eating at dhabas, but Seema obviously had finer tastes.
When we arrived at the Rajinder dhaba, everybody stared at her, as they would an alien descended from a UFO. There were a couple of sari-clad women present, perhaps wives of laborers from a construction site in the vicinity, but it is a tradition in dhabas to stare at anything that arrives in a short-skirt. It is allowed.
A guy farted loud, just after finishing his meal.
I heard her say ``Oh god,'' under her breath.
``Should we leave,'' she asked.
``Just taste the food, taste the food and see for yourself, forget about anything else,'' I insisted.
The Rajinder dhaba, like any other evening was bustling with people of every hue. So was the no-holds barred passion of gorging chicken.
Opel Astras and scooters, Cielos and motor cycles, truck drivers, bureaucrats and Indian diplomats who might have interacted with Mulford earlier in the evening, daily wage laborers and businessmen jostled for the limited space to wend their way for their piece of chicken leg or breast at Rs 25 a plate, delivered in white earthen saucers, the price the same for years, despite double digit inflation.
There are no etiquettes, it is an unlimited use of fingers and palms, no spoons, one is only expected to burp loud, an indication that draw the stray dogs who expect you to leave, depositing the remnants with them.
Sleeves rolled, noses running, heads bent, fingers dipped in gravy, well heeled gentlemen stood alongside others wearing almost nothing. The burps formed a long spray of fog that hung in the air for a while as it was winter; some washed up at a running tap in a corner, others wiped their hands on their pants and left, to chauffeur driven Cielo's or the bus stop.
We chose a relatively empty table. I could almost witness images of an up market restaurant passing Seema’s brain, even as her expression changed from bad to worse.
I went off to fetch a plate of curry as she reluctantly agreed to partake a couple of bites only. From the short distance I watched a burly man built like a tank settle his plate next to her and proceed to devour feverishly.
The chicken was scoured to the minimum, lips gnarled in every direction, the bones cracked open and marrow licked clean. Even hungry hyenas in National Geographic in a drought situation couldn't be as intense as this guy.
To add to woes, the man was a sadist. He seemed a regular and guessed that my girl was in some discomfort. Observing her, he began a loud conversation, with nobody in particular but everybody around, who seemed to be familiar with his presence.
Laden with Hindi expletives which sound much more obscene than their English counterparts, he talked of a fight a couple of days back that engulfed the dhaba. It started from the serving area when someone from one group spilled on someone from another group. Both the groups threw their curry at each other, scalding skins.
``One person lost his eye,'' he said.
Then the hangers on and onlookers tried to intervene which led to both the groups pouncing on everyone, using their fists, plates and car accessories as all the curry was splattered.
The man pointed at the ground that still carried stains of the previous day --- blood and curry. When I carried back the chicken, Seema told me she was about to faint before she almost did, clutching my arm spilling curry on the ground and my pullover.
``Water, water,'' I looked around, for a few sips.
Somebody brought a bucket of water and threatened to pour it, just as I pushed it away. It was cold. Seema’s eyes opened wide for an instant, emanating one final cry of desperation before she seemed to pass out for good.
I held her while a crowd gathered, forming a circle around us, some holding pieces of tandoori chicken, as if they were watching a film shoot in progress.
``Make her smell a shoe, a shoe,'' one of the laborer women insisted.
A man in rags and equally dirty shoes threatened to take them off.
``She will be fine,'' I stopped him.
``Lets get out of here,'' she murmured, her eyes closed.
I was relieved that she spoke and tried to calm her by offering Walls choc-in-a-box ice cream that someone handed me as I carried her to the car, like an injured player being taken off the field. Inside, she suddenly woke up, to launch into a blistering tirade at my hopeless judgment of hanging-around town.
She swore that she would never visit a dhaba. I have never again been to a dhaba on a date, but rest assured I slip in time, however busy I might be, to grab hot and spicy chicken with rotis on a worn out newspaper rag.
It’s divine.
A first visit to America will leave impressions. My recent two week’s in New York, Washington and a bit of the middle US states surely had some impact, which is as follows:
Big America: Unlike Europe or even south-east Asia, America is about size. It is all very big, except perhaps the cash-strapped Delta and Continental planes in the domestic circuit, with little leg or head space and hardly any in-flight service worth a mention, except some orange or tomato juice.
Yet, there are no skyscrapers like in Manhattan or Times Square, airports are sprawling whether Detroit or Houston, the museums and memorials are grand in Washington, Texas and Oklahoma are about big cars, roads, stores, schools and homes.
The groceries and Walmart approximate warehouses. The variety is immense, the deals very good and the quality top class, even if a bit of the items are imported from China and some India.
Such a range is not available back home.
The food portions are inexpensive and quite liberal, perhaps in keeping with the general girth of the average American. Maybe, there is a contributory factor of cheap food in making many Americans more than just healthy.
In India, food portions are small, getting smaller and highly priced, even compared to food courts in south east Asian countries such as Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand.
But, all of this is puny compared to an American repast. A six dollar breakfast comprised sausages, toast, pancakes, eggs, juice, coffee with add on butter, honey syrup and jam.
It was perhaps one rare occasion when I couldn’t finish a meal I paid for.
I didn’t ask for the food to be packed as there is an extra charge. This was unusual.
Security: The 9/11 fear factor plays out at the airports almost a decade later, even as the long queues reminds one of some of the chaos of regular Indian life. They strip you to the bare minimum, leaving nothing to chance.
It is just shirt and pants and they won’t let you through if the metal detector beeps, passing under the machine any number of times.
Belts, wallets, shoes have to be taken off, gadgets, laptops and jackets put in separate holds. There are plenty of screaming instructions.
I tried to smuggle in water in the hand bag. They threw it away and put the luggage in line again.
This is a process that has been applied to visiting Indian ministers and dignitaries as well, much to their chagrin.
The only silver lining about all of this is that there is hardly any physical frisking as in India. People have issues with this at times.
In America though, there is an ongoing debate about new X-Ray machines that will run an automatic body search.
There is a lot of chatter about it among travelers. Many, especially the women, say it is invasion of privacy. Maybe it is.
Yet, the Americans are getting it right as there have been no terror attacks in USA since September 11, 2001. In India, the militants strike at will.
Also, there is no doubt that a particular community is in focus, even if it is wrong to brand a population due to the wrong doings of some.
I saw two individuals taken away for ``special screening’’ at different airports. ``Is this because of my name,’’ one retorted. It clearly was.
There are no elaborate processes in trains, though domestic travel is as expensive as traveling by air, unlike India where rail fares are much cheaper.
But, it’s the planes that the Americans seem to guard the most and with good reason.
Indians Will Be Indians: Indians like to quibble, argue and quarrel, which some say is a sign of a healthy functional democracy. This is, however, also because back home nobody follows systems, rules and order.
Every matter can be turned around to an individual’s whim, position, contacts, phone calls and money power.
In America there is homogeneity of usual existence, like not breaking lines, following traffic rules, proper parking and honking only when necessary.
Indians generally try to be in best behavior when abroad. They pee inside loos and don’t litter.
But, sometimes it gets too much. Like when my return flight got delayed due to a blizzard.
We shouted and abused the airline management. Security was called in and they warned ``this is America sir, you could be arrested.’’
The officials were asked to shut up and the shouting continued, even as women with children in arms joined in the ruckus.
Other air carriers faced no such problems. The passengers patiently waited and slept off in corners. The Indians, meanwhile, muttered through the delay and huddled in corners to bitch and plot. They regrouped and fought about inadequate food vouchers.
Land of Opportunity: Despite the recession, America remains a land of dreams and progress.
I witnessed the same during my visa process where I met a gentleman from Punjab, an affluent state, whose application was unfortunately rejected.
He did not mind it too much.
``I will come and try again and again despite the high fees. It is a family tradition and an investment. Many of my folks are in America this way. They went on tourist visa, like I will and live and work there illegally. I am young and can earn lots of money to send back home as the dollar can convert to a lot of rupees.’’
Of course, the American dream can get more desperate, with many reports of human trafficking wherein people are duped of big amounts of money or transported in inhuman conditions packed in ships and boats.
I did sense some of the caution and perhaps hostility, given the economic slow down and general sentiments against outsourcing in USA.
The suspicious immigration officer had a friendly tone as long as I was defined a tourist who would obviously spend some money during my stay.
I was, however, sternly told that any work related pursuit away from the purpose of my visit would result in instant deportation.
Not very friendly, I must say, but I guess that’s the way it has to be in times of terrorism and job losses.
Toilet Training
There is, however, an issue about American toilets that many Indian vehemently complain about.
There is only provision of tissue paper and no water. Many of us find this dirty and also irreligious. Some find this reason enough not to marry an American. I do not differ much with these views.
``Indian public toilets are dirty, but there is water at least,’’ one fellow traveler said ``Otherwise one can just go in the open carrying a bottle of water.’’
Road Sense
There is also an issue about crossing roads. Vehicles move on the right side, while in India on the left.
One is practiced about watching the front right while walking across a street rather than keeping an eye on the left. This can disorient and has resulted in accidents.
Luckily, there is respect for the pedestrian in western countries, who have the right of way. In India, it is the other way round. The drivers don’t care.
Still I almost got knocked down once in Oklahoma and also caused bit of a jam as a lady driver waited for me to cross elsewhere.
I was not aware she was on my left. This can be very dangerous as the big American cars can sure cause some damage to the human body.
Chasing the Indian monsoon (June 2004)
It is like a strip tease.
The audience: Indians, browbeaten by the summer heat that unfailingly crosses 40 degrees this time of the year, raising temperatures and tempers, everywhere.
The performer: the Indian monsoon that tantalizes till the very end.
The drummers: officials from the MET office, who play it safe by predicting a below normal rainfall, each year. If they get it right, they are safe. If not, nobody bothers what they said as the rains arrive.
For the populace calculations and speculations happen in an overdrive.
There is desperation in the air, an example, the cases of road rage that show a remarkable rise during this period, with Delhi one of the worst affected.
In the past, Sunita Chadha, a mother of three girls was shot dead on a road by a group of young boys, short-tempered in any case, more short-fused due to the heat. In another instance a truck driver crushed a man leaving wife and two children as survivors. There are many more ghastly encounters that happen each year, only in summer as the heat and humidity turns unbearable.
Meanwhile, Indians await the monsoons, like drought-stricken animals of Africa, beseeching the sky-gods to oblige.
"India has a traveling monsoon, and it travels fast," says Alexander Frather
in his delightful travelogue Chasing the Indian Monsoon.
But never fast enough. A couple of squalls, a pitter-patter of raindrops, as is happening now, only raise the expectancy.
These are false alarms, the audience roars in anticipation, as the winds of change happen to be just another flap of the impending climax.
``This is pre-monsoon humidity, I can feel the low pressure, it smells different, notice how much I am sweating,’’ is the comment in grimy public places, air-conditioned offices and plush cool plazas, which feel the same, the excess demand for power resulting in a permanent tripping of transformers.
In the recent past Indians high on incomes have not helped matters by buying more and more air-conditioners that guzzle power. Power generation controlled by the government woefully lags the rising demand.
A readymade excuse is the statement every year this time, by somebody who matters in the Electricity Board, explaining the reasons for non-existent power for months during these months - "The sudden temperature drop and water seepage due to the rains, resulting in transformers going bust."
The MET office is the only succor. There could be a train crash, India could announce peace with Pakistan, Bush could announce an attack on Iraq or catch Saddam in his underwear, but editors find space every day in newspapers and TV on the MET office info, which is usually a play-safe denial: ``No, no, no --- the raindrops are not the monsoon, just a disturbance.’’
There is a collecting moan cursing the Gods. The only sure facts are: ``last year’s record of the all time high at this time of the year has been broken. It was 45 degrees, it is 46.’’
There is the speculation on dates, with even the satta (unorganized gambling) market getting into the fray, given the cricket off-season. It will be June 23, an unsuspecting official may say as an aside, only to find himself splashed prime time in the evening.
"It's hit Maharashtra, swept Gujarat, Rajasthan too, it is hovering around
Haryana," say reporters from anywhere in the country, with TV producers dispatching their camera teams scurrying across the land looking for an elusive black cloud in the background for a piece-to-camera.
The year 2003 was particularly difficult. The monsoon tantalized --- she arrived with a vengeance; the circumspect MET office even declared that she had unveiled her full fury.
As if to prove them wrong, she petered out, leaving most of north India in a severe drought, the worst in over a decade. Indian agriculture still depends on the rains. Though parts of Eastern India were inundated due to floods and incessant rain, one region does not make a whole monsoon.
On cue, came the declaration that the surrounding air pressure had reduced considerably, spurring speculation that most of India was heading towards a bigger drought. In August, it rained in most parts of India, with bulletins saying that fears of drought are over and the government should gear up for floods.
This was our prediction, was a Met office statement, given the reasonable margin of error this and that way, which finds no place in the media. Who cares about the MET office once it rains? The audience just claps.
Not leaving anything to chance, India’s meticulous Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has already said that the country should be prepared for drought as well as floods, as the case may be this year.
He has reason to doubt. Usually, the south-west monsoon hits Kerala by June 1, Mumbai by June 5, and Delhi around June 29. The predictions have begun. The monsoon is supposed to have arrived in south India. But, who knows.
Indeed, for most of India, the monsoon is a mother scrubbing her dirty child. The country needs a wash and the Gods know it. Months of dust and heat, on roadsides, trees and semi-burnt leaves and the faces of laborers and bus conductors, washed clean. India glistens and then chokes as the drainage too leaves a lot to be desired.
A couple of years back at Vinay Marg - a busy diplomatic highway in the Capital – next to the happening Chanakya cinema hall and the Prime Minister’s residence, a furiously driven city bus stalled, the drains spilling all around it.
A couple of days later all that was visible was the top - Bus No. 610. Yashwant Place, close by, is the site where many tourist excursions begin; the sunken Red Line bus became a stopover.
A terrific photo-op for the tourists; bus number 610 along with pictures of the Red Fort, Taj Mahal and the high rises housing information technology and multinational offices in the suburbs.
So much for Indian cities turning into a Shanghai.
The story of the bus doesn’t end here. Little boys and beggars swam around it, played on top and floated boats. The tourists could not have taken back a truer image of the Capital. The bus surfaced as the rains receded.
One little boy also got caught, sucked by a current into a manhole. This happens every year, if not Chanakyapuri, then somewhere else.
For a lady, the monsoon extracts a price. On the other hand, the blame may lie elsewhere.
An Indian Dhaba Experience
In India there are every kind of restaurants. Macdonald’s has taken root and spreading, but none beats the dhaba experience.
Till recently I lived at Chanakyapuri, which is the diplomatic area of New Delhi, the Capital of India, the same locality in which reside US ambassador to India Dr David Mulford and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Tucked a couple of kilometers away from this high-security area is a popular dhaba called the Rajinder da Dhaba, the da in the dhaba a derivation from the local dialect Punjabi, meaning that the dhaba belongs to Rajinder.
The dhaba is now run by Rajinder’s two ample sons, their dimensions by way of the enormous amounts of free chicken curry they consumed during childhood, courtesy their father’s dhaba.
Dhabas such as Rajinder number several thousands found all over India, along the highways, in little crooks and crannies of big cities and metros as they do not take up much space while giving good returns to the minimal investment.
The beat cops and municipal authorities have to be kept well oiled and happy by the owners, but they come cheap. Sometimes, even a meal a day suffices. Anything for dhaba chicken curry?
Traditionally, the dhabas are meant for tired truck drivers looking for a break from their long journeys, alongside highways. They offer cheap food, music, an open-air television and a charpoy that is a bed with a wooden structure knitted with jute strings, a tad uncomfortable but the best ventilation given the summer temperatures and erratic power situation here.
Some of the popular dhabas along the highways also provide girls who sing, dance and offer more which is illegal, but still a flourishing trade.
However, over time dhabas have come to define a culture, centered round food --- any viagra talk pales in comparison to this ultimate turn on, a blob of leg in a bowl of curry and butter, tandoori rotis, a preparation of wheat resembling pancakes on a sheet of newspaper, onions sprinkled with pungent syrup and a liberal dose of Indian masala (spices) ---- everything that goes against the spirit of new age health gurus.
The government of Punjab, one of the wealthier states of India, lists Dhabas as an attraction worth a try by tourists, except that many a foreign visitor has gone away clutching his/her stomach, given the heavy dose of masala and mustard oil. But, dhaba food can get no more Indian. Also no social barriers matter here.
The crowd at Chanakyapuri where I lived, despite backgrounds where hygiene is an important consideration, was regular to the Rajinder dhaba for years.
Once I took my girlfriend. I don’t form a general opinion based on a single episode, but the advice is that a dhaba is not the best place to date. Seema found the atmosphere a bit overwhelming. She, if I may take the liberty, belongs to the classes not the masses.
To begin with, a comment on the ambience of the Rajinder dhaba, like most others, include buzzing flies, grime, lingering muscular dogs, an envelop of fumes spewed by the traffic whizzing close by. The eating area is limited to a few wrought iron rusted tables, fixed to the ground to prevent people from hitting each other. The rest is open sky and the charred interiors of the tandoor, a huge clay stove filled with charcoal to roast the meat or prepare the rotis.
I grew up eating at dhabas, but Seema obviously had finer tastes.
When we arrived at the Rajinder dhaba, everybody stared at her, as they would an alien descended from a UFO. There were a couple of sari-clad women present, perhaps wives of laborers from a construction site in the vicinity, but it is a tradition in dhabas to stare at anything that arrives in a short-skirt. It is allowed.
A guy farted loud, just after finishing his meal.
I heard her say ``Oh god,'' under her breath.
``Should we leave,'' she asked.
``Just taste the food, taste the food and see for yourself, forget about anything else,'' I insisted.
The Rajinder dhaba, like any other evening was bustling with people of every hue. So was the no-holds barred passion of gorging chicken.
Opel Astras and scooters, Cielos and motor cycles, truck drivers, bureaucrats and Indian diplomats who might have interacted with Mulford earlier in the evening, daily wage laborers and businessmen jostled for the limited space to wend their way for their piece of chicken leg or breast at Rs 25 a plate, delivered in white earthen saucers, the price the same for years, despite double digit inflation.
There are no etiquettes, it is an unlimited use of fingers and palms, no spoons, one is only expected to burp loud, an indication that draw the stray dogs who expect you to leave, depositing the remnants with them.
Sleeves rolled, noses running, heads bent, fingers dipped in gravy, well heeled gentlemen stood alongside others wearing almost nothing. The burps formed a long spray of fog that hung in the air for a while as it was winter; some washed up at a running tap in a corner, others wiped their hands on their pants and left, to chauffeur driven Cielo's or the bus stop.
We chose a relatively empty table. I could almost witness images of an up market restaurant passing Seema’s brain, even as her expression changed from bad to worse.
I went off to fetch a plate of curry as she reluctantly agreed to partake a couple of bites only. From the short distance I watched a burly man built like a tank settle his plate next to her and proceed to devour feverishly.
The chicken was scoured to the minimum, lips gnarled in every direction, the bones cracked open and marrow licked clean. Even hungry hyenas in National Geographic in a drought situation couldn't be as intense as this guy.
To add to woes, the man was a sadist. He seemed a regular and guessed that my girl was in some discomfort. Observing her, he began a loud conversation, with nobody in particular but everybody around, who seemed to be familiar with his presence.
Laden with Hindi expletives which sound much more obscene than their English counterparts, he talked of a fight a couple of days back that engulfed the dhaba. It started from the serving area when someone from one group spilled on someone from another group. Both the groups threw their curry at each other, scalding skins.
``One person lost his eye,'' he said.
Then the hangers on and onlookers tried to intervene which led to both the groups pouncing on everyone, using their fists, plates and car accessories as all the curry was splattered.
The man pointed at the ground that still carried stains of the previous day --- blood and curry. When I carried back the chicken, Seema told me she was about to faint before she almost did, clutching my arm spilling curry on the ground and my pullover.
``Water, water,'' I looked around, for a few sips.
Somebody brought a bucket of water and threatened to pour it, just as I pushed it away. It was cold. Seema’s eyes opened wide for an instant, emanating one final cry of desperation before she seemed to pass out for good.
I held her while a crowd gathered, forming a circle around us, some holding pieces of tandoori chicken, as if they were watching a film shoot in progress.
``Make her smell a shoe, a shoe,'' one of the laborer women insisted.
A man in rags and equally dirty shoes threatened to take them off.
``She will be fine,'' I stopped him.
``Lets get out of here,'' she murmured, her eyes closed.
I was relieved that she spoke and tried to calm her by offering Walls choc-in-a-box ice cream that someone handed me as I carried her to the car, like an injured player being taken off the field. Inside, she suddenly woke up, to launch into a blistering tirade at my hopeless judgment of hanging-around town.
She swore that she would never visit a dhaba. I have never again been to a dhaba on a date, but rest assured I slip in time, however busy I might be, to grab hot and spicy chicken with rotis on a worn out newspaper rag.
It’s divine.
Bollywood On Top
India’s most beautiful woman is hitched (January 2007)
Actress Aishwarya Rai has found her life partner in co-actor of several movies Abhishek Bachchan, son of the doyen of Indian cinema, the great Amitabh Bachchan, voted as the global actor of the millennium.
For long Aishwarya, a former Miss World, has defined the quintessential Indian beauty in western minds, appearing on the cover of Time magazine and the touchstone of popular American television, The Oprah Winfrey show.
Her persona has transcended much beyond what many consider average acting prowess, but as India’s global face has emerged in software, outsourcing and a vast untapped market, she has typified the perfect Indian woman to international audiences.
Somehow her acting abilities have not been in the same league as her printed pictures, her biggest movies Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam and Devdas shot quite a while back and her latest Umrao Jaan and Bride and Prejudice not doing well in the box office. Fans have panned her Oprah appearance in which she giggled more than she talked.
But, she has tried hard, even consciously moving away from the ``ice maiden’’ tag, by agreeing to kiss co-actor Hriktik Roshan in a recent release, Dhoom-11, predictably a runaway hit, though the scene reportedly had Abhishek squirming on his seat when he watched the movie for the first time.
In the past Aishwarya famously refused to star in a James Bond movie, apparently because she had to kiss Pierce Brosnan (who essayed the role at that time), as all Bond girls have to do.
However, in keeping with trends in contemporary Indian cinema and competition in the arena from peers such as Rani Mukherjee and Priety Zinta, Aishwarya did bite the lip, as the role demanded in Dhoom.
Still, as an actress Aishwarya will perhaps not be pegged among the all time greats, though her beauty is unparalleled.
Indeed, she is beautiful, to many many the most pretty, with captivating eyes and a face that can tantalize any male in the world.
That she chose Abhishek (could he say no, did he have a choice) has caught the imagination of the Indian media for a while now, earning them the sobriquet Abhiwarya, a blatant copy of the other hot paparazzi property, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie conflated as Brangelina.
The rumor mills about an impending marriage have been working wild for a while now. The two were engaged to be married this week, relegating every other news item including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to south east Asia, a far reaching energy pact and defense minister Pranab Mukerjee’s Pakistan sojourn.
The Bachchan’s and Rai’s are rooted to what is termed as traditional middle class values and have reportedly been consulting astrologers, pundits and sages that reside across the country.
The Bachchans (Amitabh and actress wife Jaya Bhaduri, also a member of the Indian Parliament) have apparently been concerned about a planetary configuration around Aishwarya that makes her a Manglik (which means she is strong-willed and dominating woman).
This could still be okay, except that she reportedly belongs to a more virulent version of Manglik that could in turn shorten the life span of her husband, whoever he is.
Some added fuel to the fire by speculating that she has been unlucky to her former boyfriends, including the hotheaded Bollywood mega-star Salman Khan, who has since seeing her been to jail over a case related to hunting endangered wildlife and is fighting a case for allegedly mowing people while driving drunk.
Astrological matters can be quite tricky in Indian situations and many possible matches have not happened due to such pronouncements by pundits, believe it or not. Though, when it comes to Aishwarya, it is debate able, whether any man including Abhishek, would let such matters dictate.
But, the Bachchan Seniors have reportedly been a worried lot and have been visiting temples around the country in the last few months. The good thing about Indian pundits and astrologers is that they always have a solution to problems they plant in the heads of their clients.
As per the anti-dote, Aishwarya was reportedly recently married to the peepal tree (considered holy), in the religious city of Benaras, as it was ordained that her second husband would not suffer her negative planetary vibrations.
Thus, technically and astrologically this is going to be Aishwarya’s second marriage and Abhishek’s first. What if the peepal tree turned into a handsome prince if/when Aishwarya garlanded it? Problem.
Most predictions are that the marriage will go the distance, with many babies to follow soon as Aishwarya approaches her mid-30s and Abhishek a couple of years younger.
Apart from strong family foundations, Abhishek is also a steady and regular guy with no known vices, a factor that should be very important to Aishwarya.
In the past she has been in a tumultuous relationship with Salman, known for his wild ways and roughing up girlfriends. He beat up Aishwarya as well, even as jealousy and over possessiveness drove him to recklessness such as barging into her house and movie shoots, until the police had to warn him to keep away, after a complaint by Aishwarya’s father.
Plus, she stands to inherit the estimated Rs 2.5 billion fortune amassed by Abhishek’s parents, the one sister happily married to a top Indian business family. Not that Aishwarya needs the money, given the very high fees she charges for movies and endorsements. But, it helps.
Abhishek probably holds the Indian record of maximum number of flop movies since making his debut as an actor a few years back (this also cost him personally as his then girlfriend, actress Karishma Kapoor chose to break the marriage engagement rather than be associated with a failed actor). The Bachchans had reportedly even purchased a bungalow for the couple to move in.
But courtesy Bachchan Senior, known for his extremely good inter-personal skills and an enormous reputation in the industry (in his mid 60s he still commands the highest price for movies and brand endorsements), the roles kept coming for Abhishek. Sometimes it pays to be born with a silver spoon.
To his credit, Abhishek has found his groove, worked hard on his acting and dancing skills, developed a loyal fan following and delivered hits such as Dhoom-11, Sarkar, Bluffmaster and Bunty aur Babli. His latest release Guru (his past few have predictably been with Aishwarya) is already being touted as a runaway hit, with critics praising his acting.
Abhishek thus knows how to create his own space living in the shadow of a father who is a legend. Now, he has another living legend for a wife.
For millions of Aishwarya fans, one can only hope that she continues to act and mesmerize even after marriage and babies as other contemporaries such as Kajol and Karishma.
But, it will not be the same. Can it?
Shilpa Shetty Arouses Interest (January 2007)
It was understandable when the top echelons of the UK government reacted to the apparent racist slurs bestowed in a British reality show on Indian actress Shilpa Shetty.
Racism is a major issue that western populations, including immigrants, have had to deal with since time. It is not so in India.
Thus, it has been the unexpected reactions from top Indian government quarters, including ministers and the foreign office that have spoken out in their official capacities that have been a bit unusual.
Till the recent past an issue revolving around Shilpa would have found plenty of presence on TV channels and Internet blogs (especially expressions by immigrant populations who perhaps face racist jibes in their daily existence), as has happened this time as well.
In India, Shilpa is the kind of controversy the TV channels always relish.
It is a good mix. Shilpa, not much of an actress (not many in Bollywood are in any case, given the role of most women as an attractive add on to the main plot) possesses one of the best bodies among Indian female stars and a fantastic dancer due to which some of most popular songs in recent Indian film history have been pictured on her. This is of course more than enough to arouse plenty of viewers interest.
As has become common practice now, a few unemployed youth this time in the state of Bihar, who perhaps are unaware of the alphabets of the English language, burnt a few white effigies representing British executives, to earn their two-minute fame on TV centered round the Shilpa episode.
The verbal attack on her would have (and has) died down once a new set of images have appeared, such as the latest slapping incident of the coach of the Indian cricket team by a crazed fan in the state of Orissa, where a match is to be played. Should the foreign office comment on this as well?
However, what has been a bit unusual is the alacrity with which the Indian establishment has reacted to an incident in a second grade reality show, desperately seeking to widen its audience base by roping in a failing Indian actress, who has agreed to participate for purely commercial reasons. Such government agility is definitely required, but in many other spheres of government functioning that continue to be woeful.
To explain a bit more, the Indian politician is a selfish creature with an eye always on votes and thinks about every means, whether for the good or bad, to influence various vote banks. Religion and caste, for example, are potent tools often used to coalesce support. In this context, racism becomes a bit of a misnomer, as it does not exist in India.
Thankfully, it is also not as if Shilpa was physically harmed in any way, which would have listed as a crime, with Indian diplomats helping the law take its course. As a matter of fact Shilpa has spoken against any racial attack in the show, clearly at the instance of the channel bosses who are paying her a fat paycheck, more than all other participants in the show. There is also the fear of more sponsors withdrawing and the show being scrapped. To repeat, racism is a big issue in the west.
Yet, it does not explain or merit the Indian government’s involvement. There is the India’s pride has been hurt argument, given India’s colonial past, but does not hold too much basis. Majority of the Indian population is very young and don’t know a bit about being ruled by a foreign power.
These youth are more concerned about acquiring the right skills to be absorbed into fast growing and very lucrative Services sector that ranges from software to outsourcing, hospitality, retail, finance and banking and more. They see a very bright future for themselves and a country on the threshold of many good things.
They expect the government of the day to deliver on what is required, infrastructure, law and order and an efficient regulatory system that comes into play in a very macro sense. Otherwise, individualism and merit should be respected.
Indeed, the Indian politician and power holders, it seems, are becoming increasingly aware of what has been termed as ``middle class sensibilities.’’
For so long used to dealing with a an illiterate or semi-illiterate population that formed the maximum number of voters, the middle classes fast approaching the 400 million number are beginning to be counted.
They are empowered by education and have no limits to the kind of economic prosperity that awaits them, given the sprinkling of millionaires and billionaires that seem to prop up from anywhere in India now.
It is a global phenomenon as well. The emerging global middle-class of China, India, Russia, Brazil and elsewhere has been ranked at the seventh position in the “50 who matter now” list published by a recognized international forum.
``This emerging class is looking forward to enjoying a more comfortable way of life. These newly affluent consumers also have the money to spend — estimated at over US$1 trillion a year,’’ the magazine said.
Thus, on the positive side the Indian politician is beginning to be aware of the massive thinking population, which is a sign of a maturing democracy.
For example, there is an emerging political consensus about economic reforms, development and change. No party in power can now afford not to leave its imprint on pushing India to a higher trajectory of growth, better infrastructure, competition and employment.
Even the left parties are siding with the Tata Group in West Bengal to acquire land for an automobile factory. Of course market forces must apply to everybody including farmers who can only be happy when paid premiums for the prime land they hold. Development needs to be participative.
On the issue of reservations in educational institutions for backward castes, the government has ensured that there is a commensurate hike in number of seats for general category students, who mostly belong to the middle classes.
But, at the same time the political class has not fully figured out the issues to talk about, express their opinions on or meet expectations.
One benchmark is to look at the media that is closely followed by middle India. But, TV is now increasingly about escapism and what is being watched during ones leisure time does not essentially translated into a matter that the viewer wants the government to act upon. Certainly, not name calling Shilpa Shetty.
The Shilpa episode clearly shows that the Indian politician, as in the past, is trying to adapt. Past strategies cannot be easily forgotten, but new ones are being adopted. This can only be for the good, though as far as the insult to Shilpa goes it should have been better to keep the mouth shut.
Kissing James Bond In India (January 2004)
Invoking feelings of pride for the entire sub-continent, India's top actress, Aishwarya Rai, has been approached to play the "Bond girl" opposite Pierce Brosnan, a coveted role consistently filled by some of Hollywood's sexiest ladies - most recently Academy Award winner Halle Berry.
In the interviews that have followed the announcement, Rai has been asked the same question time and time again - will she kiss James Bond, as most Bond girls do, quite willingly? Rai has been circumspect, knowing the Indian media all too well. Even an unsuspecting remark could be a headline: "Rai will kiss Brosnan", or "Rai prepared to bond with Bond", or "Rai will go all the way".
Rai told the British press that she has agreed to appear in the next James Bond film if its producers agree to use a body double for the sex scenes, noting that her strict upbringing meant there was no question of her doing anything saucy. "I've said I will do the film if there is a body double.
The producers have said they will have to ask Pierce," she said. Pierce can't be happy. The focus here, though, has been on the kiss, as most writers have ruled out sex. Indeed, a top Bollywood actress kissing on the screen is as close to going all the way as Indians are accustomed too - by Bollywood standards.
Handsome as Brosnan may be, Rai's answers have been neutral, from, "I have not thought about it," to "We will have to wait and see, I have made no such commitments." A kiss in this country is a big deal. It has affected relations between India and Pakistan, although at most times it takes much less.
A furor was created a couple of years back when prominent author Khushwant Singh planted a party peck on the daughter of the then Pakistani high commissioner Ashraf Jehangir Qazi. Tenuous India-Pakistan relations took a further tumble.
Qazi scurried off to Islamabad to kiss the feet of then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, explaining that the whole of Pakistan need not be outraged. Worldwide, of course, a kiss always makes news that is given prominent coverage in India. Former US president Bill Clinton went as far as regularly kissing his wife Hillary on the forehead. He didn't feel the need to go any further.
Tennis great Andre Agassi likes to plant sweaty lingering kisses on his wife, Steffi Graf, between shots and games. She doesn't seem to mind. Not too long ago Agassi did it to Brooke Shields, who also did not seem to mind. Continuing with the tennis world, the Williams sisters are regularly planted a kiss by their father in appreciation of the good work they are putting in.
In the runaway hit Pretty Woman, Julia Roberts' most "personal kiss" happened to be on the mouth, although she uses it on every other part of Richard Gere's anatomy.
Indian girls have routinely been in the news for "kissing indiscretions" that have not gone down too well with the population. Young, over-eager and beautiful actress Padmini Kolhapuri went "all the way" with Prince Charles. His royal highness was in the news again shortly after in India for the "not-so-eager kiss" by the late Princess Diana that sent the tabloids into a tizzy.
Also worth noting was actress Shabana Azmi, who planted a "freedom kiss" on South Africa's Nelson Mandela, which caused a lot of heartburn in the country.
We are a liberal country, not in the mold of Pakistan, but can be just as prudish when our women kiss - or are kissed - by men who don't belong here. The only instances of public kissing here involve foreigners.
There is always a crowd of hangers-on who accumulate for a closeup of the action, which can happen on a street or a market place. The big question, however, remains: with Internet porn, explicit pictures and video just a click away, why, then, is kissing such an issue in the land of Kama Sutra and Khajuraho? There have been several explanations to this phenomenon.
First, it is the stereotype of the Hindi movies, the most popular mass culture phenomenon apart from cricket. (There is little scope for kissing in cricket, as only men play it, and mostly just men watch it.) In the Hindi movies the kiss is a really big happening, if it happens at all. Hindi songs are not only about running around trees, but also gyrations that approximate making love with clothes on and from a distance.
But when it comes to a real kiss, the world shakes and the heavens come down. A recent example that attracted attention was the "rain kiss" in the movie Raja Hindustani in which the two top stars, Karishma Kapoor and Aamir Khan, kiss each other.
The clouds thundered, lightening struck and the rain grew heavier as the lips touched. The common explanation by producers and directors as well as the censor board is that Hindi movies are family outings; so kissing is a no-no. But the most brutal violence on screen escapes any cuts. Recent crossover movies aimed at non-resident Indians and English-speaking urban audiences are bolder.
One has the pleasure of watching the absolutely ravishing Lisa Ray kissing in Bollywood Hollywood. There were a number of full-throated scenes with Rahul Khanna, well shot with Lisa putting up a sterling performance.
Then there was the movie called Khwaish that was released a few months ago. It stars two newcomers who are being actively sought due to the 17 kissing scenes in the movie. Recent surveys have indicated that promiscuity as well as frequency of sex among Indians is on the rise.
Yet it is not as if smooching happens in public places here. Another reason for the coy approach is the laws that prosecute for public obscenity - including kissing. Indian cops, generally a lethargic lot, are eagle-eyed about couples on the loose in gardens, parks, cars or on any corner. It's the easiest money-earner. One more explanation, far-fetched though, is the weather.
It is hot most of the time, requiring air-conditioning for kissing in the open. This writer, however, attributes it to kismet - bad karma in the past - that has resulted in kisses being such misses in this great nation.
Sex, Britney, Cameron, Kareena and Mallika…..
For all those -- the truth is, there are millions, perhaps a billion --- who trawl the Internet fishing for fresh porn and similar stuff, it can get no better.
There is oral talk from Britney Spears husband for 55 hours who has dished out all that happened when they went about their business as a married couple; there is Cameroz Diaz who is busy trying to erase She’s No Angel, a 30-minute soft porn video of hers on the Internet; there has been Paris Hilton’s One Night in Paris; Baywatch star Gena Lee Nolin bared it all in a mattress romp.
In the recent past, there has been the homemade videotape of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee that has been a rage since 1997 on the Internet. Further in history there have been Marilyn Monroe and later Sylvester Stallone.
Pamela-Paris as well as others associated with the release of such private celebrity material which are hot-sellers on porn sites have gone on to make pots of money, with the stakes only higher as technology has improved over time.
Today, estimates of the annual revenue for adult entertainment film sales and rentals and website subscription fees range from $8-10 billion. In such a global scenario, it seems that Indians too want to join the party, where boldness and obviously bareness is fast becoming the credo.
It could be more than just a co-incidence that top Indian actors Kareena Kapoor and Shahid Kapur have gone to town about their relationship, though the stuff they do together has a much more dignified air than the things Britney’s ex-hubby has talked about.
A prominent Indian actress is considering an offer to appear on Playboy which obviously will be beyond just a bikini spread; two Indian girls are running successful porn sites in the USA; there is a bandwagon effect of top Indian actresses on a kissing spree; a bold movie on lesbianism, a series of Bollywood movies on affairs outside marriage --- the themes are getting barer and so are Indian women who parade the wide spectrum of India’s glamour industry, with porn completing the widest loop.
There is bound to be an overall ripple effect, for the good or the bad.
The caveat first. It must be remembered that India still exists at two levels which the defeated Bharatiya Janata Party realized a bit late in the day after their ``Shining India’’ campaign boomeranged --- the urban pockets of affluence where the traditional stereotype of the Indian woman who raises kids and looks after her husband at the cost of professional achievement is being continually shaken; and the other India where one hears of a Hindu boy being burnt for loving a Muslim girl or the dreaded ``culture police’’ composed of the fringe elements of Hindu fundamentalists who still believe that it is anathema for a girl and a boy to hold hands in public.
Now, for the bits of breaking of barriers, wherein no Indian woman has gone before in arenas of competition that remain the most mass cultural influences on Indian society --- movies, television and the expanding internet. Angela Devi and Sunny Leone are two Indian girls who have hit big time in the US porn industry that is estimated to be worth anywhere between $ 4 billion and $ 10 billion.
Indian girls feature regularly in international porn sites, but never have any carried the tag of being stars, meriting a front-page display in a national newspaper here.
Angela, 25, was born to Delhi migrants in New Delhi and has been living in Phoenix, Arizona for the past 17 years. Her credits include regular appearances in hardcore magazine Hustler since 2002 and voyeuristic videos. Sunny, 23, came of her own when she was named Penthouse’s Pet of the Year a few months back. Both Angela and Sunny also run successful websites.
The ``success’’ of Angela and Sunny may be dismissed by some as Indians taking on a different hue in the USA, working hard and making a mark in any endeavor of their choosing normally as computer engineers, doctors, teachers, taxi-drivers, a couple of film makers and an odd Bobby Jindal making a pitch for governor of Louisiana.
It’s a matter of adding porn to the list in challenging times. But, the story is not limited to Indians in USA. Here, Mallika Sherwat who has set scorching standards in her bare-dare movies --- two till now, the first Khwaish which broke any Indian record of maximum 19 kisses and the second Murder which was an equal encore --- has been offered to pose for the center spread of the venerable Playboy magazine that has catapulted so many to stardom. This is the first such offer to an Indian star, though a few have appeared in mainstream news magazines.
Mallika’s publicist has said that the actress is considering the proposal and going by her past performances it looks unlikely that she is going to reject the chance in a lifetime.
In yet another coup Mallika will also be the only Indian star to feature in a Jackie Chan movie and there is talk that it involves at least one nude scene as well, though the actress has been going to town insisting that there is no such episode.
The success of Khwaish and Murder and by extension Mallika has sent the rest of Bollywood actresses in a tizzy, with several now shaking off their traditional Indian mores to break free.
The first off the block is a starlet in the form of Neha Dhupia who in her second movie release called Julie is set to bare her backside, the first such happening in a mainstream Bollywood fare. A former Miss India, Dhupia’s uncut nude and love making scenes from the movie are already doing the rounds on the Internet.
Not to be undone, Kareena Kapoor has added spice to the powerful Govind Nihalani film Dev on the Gujarat riots of 1992, by allowing her co-star Fardeen Khan complete play with her lips. Another star Mahima Chowdury, who famously spurned top director Subhash Ghai who wanted her to strip a little a few years back, will be featuring in a series of lip-clinchers with much older co-star Anupam Kher in the movie Chess.
Bollywood’s prima dona Aishwaria Rai, has reportedly shared some close chemistry with real life beau and actor Vivek Oberoi in a yet to be released movie. Rai was considered the epitome of prudery, keeping a safe distance from most of her co-stars on-screen, till now. Of course the readymade answer to why this sudden change in screen prudery: ``the script demanded it,’’ the starlets pout in unison.
Indian actresses on a kissing spree also follows Bollywood’s experiments with several bold themes connected to extra-marital affairs, one-night stands in movies such as Tum, Raaz, Murder among others.
One recent release in this genre is a movie called Girlfriend, is the story of two lesbians, quite trashy by any standards but inviting a lot of publicity due to the theme.
The movie raised the hackles of the ``culture brigade’’ in the form of the Shiv Sena --- regional party of Maharashtra with affiliations to the BJP --- whose activists are attacking cinema halls playing the film, accusing the producer and director of polluting Indian society.
The same people had reacted similarly a few years back to the movie Fire, starring top actresses Nandita Das and Shabana Azmi, on the same theme.
All the boldness in one broad field of activity would of course come to a naught if Indian women were not making headways in other areas, not connected only to matters of a few exposures and suggested sex. The news is both good and bad.
The unshackling of the Indian economy, the increased role of the private service sector and emergence of multinationals over the past few years is also witnessing a slow, albeit definite rise of women managers and entrepreneurs who are beginning to take charge.
This is a long way from results thrown by several surveys in the 90s that did not reveal more than a handful (less than two digits) of powerful Indian women in the corporate sector. A recent study has shown that the number of successful girl geeks in India’s vaunted Information Technology sector has also grown exponentially.
Bollywood itself is witnessing the emergence of filmmakers such as Tanuja Chandra, Farah Khan, Pooja Bhatt, Ekta Kapoor who are making successful movies.
The flip side is the alarming drop in the sex ratio --- the number of women per thousand men --- across the country, with the steepest fall in urban pockets, which says a sordid story of destroying the female fetus and killing the girl child. As reminded earlier, India still exists on two planes, one that is setting its own standards and another where a girl is never born. It’s a tragic and happy mix.
Why Hurley went for Nayar
There are all over the pages here again. Liz Hurley and Arun Nayar,
consequent to their wedding plans, setting off the commonly encountered
debate relating the two.
Hurley has been in the spotlight for some time now, as Hugh Grant's
girlfriend, the Double Whammy and Bedazzled star and a beautiful woman
whose personal life interests everyone.
Nayar, until recently, was known in pockets of Europe where his business
interests lie and Mumbai where he originates. He is handsome, successful, a
charmer (the press reports say so), with pots of money and not too happy
with his wife --- ideal conditions for another woman to walk into his life.
It happened to be Hurley, in a similar personal situation. Lucky him.
Contrasted to her fame, he is near anonymous and should recede to his
relatively faceless existence, were she to drop him. Unless he is smart and
cruel and writes a book on how and where to make out with Hurley, like many
have done with Princess Diana.
Still, after millions more, a couple of months facing flashlights, he should
disappear from collective consciousness, when the media forgets him (viz
Chicago) while Hurley will endure, through her movies/endorsements, looks,
or the next man she chooses.
Right now, though, in the company of Hurley, Nayar is always news ---
holding her hand at Cannes or inside the British Airways flight where things
got a trifle hot between them for passenger comfort or a discreet visit with
her to home town Mumbai, that was well caught by the tabloids here.
The question is: should an Indian man going out with a Hollywood diva be
considered a national achievement? Or did Nair get plain lucky? To put the
query in correct perspective: Ever since Bollywood heart throb Madhuri Dixit
married an Indian doctor settled in the USA, many similar doctors across the
world feel they stand a chance with Bollywood starlets and rue they did not
woo Dixit.
In the same breath, should every tangible Indian male consider himself worth
a shot whenever a Hollywood actress finds herself single or is on the
rebound, ditched by a former boyfriend? Binged, in Hurley terms.
It is difficult to estimate why Hurley went for Nayar, as women are
inscrutable, but there are arguments being bandied here. First --- the vital
stats, which can be an important factor. The beauty and the beast is a fairy
tale.
How much of Nayar is Indian looks? Did she spot him at a do and say,
``oooooh, he looks so Indian.'' Drool drool. Would it have made a
difference to Hurley if Nair were not an Indian? Well, looks wise, he could
pass of as a Pakistani, Fijian, Sri Lankan, Malaysian, Saudi Arabian. Even
Afghan or Iraqi. Some say he looks a bit like Saddam Hussein's elder son
Uday, dead or alive, with a different hairstyle.
Arguments of nationality being a factor are thus eliminated, though, to be
fair, Hurley probably would not have gone for Nair if he did look like Uday.
The only male in this region to attract women anywhere in the world on
sheer brute looks was Pakistan's former cricketer, the charismatic, though
now aging and struggling politician Imran Khan. But, Nayar is no Khan.
To delve deeper --- what is it that attracts western beauties to India or
things Indian, in the first place? Kate Winslet, Goldie Hawn have visited
India. Nicol Kidman dropped by incognito, in dark glasses and a salwar
kameez, though everyone recognized her.
These incredibly beautiful women arrived for spiritual solace, yoga,
alternative healing, meditation and making peace with their tumultuous
professional and personal lives. They didn't come chasing Indian men.
It is unlikely that Hurley went for Nair's spirituality, not in designer
suit. There is lots of snooping going around (very soon we should see them
naked on the internet, beach bathing, which could already be a search engine
away.)
But, one hasn't read anything that suggests that Nayar interprets tomes of
Hindu philosophy, reasoning to Hurley that Grant with pants down and a
prostitute was just the play of Maya, the truth that such a happening in the
ultimate analysis does not exist.
Nayar wouldn't, even if he did read about Maya. Lets grant him this much.
Nair's loss could be Grant's gain. He certainly is not the spiritual Indian
eyed by western beauties to discover their souls sitting by his knee. If it
was not Hurley, it could have been anyone else, equally beautiful, perhaps
not as famous. Nayar seemed ripe for it.
Money is not a factor here; it is but there are too many millionaires in her
circuit. It is the least common eligibility factor. She is hiring a private
jet on her own steam, to fly cozy with Nair rather than BA executive class;
she shouldn't need anyone else's dough.
On the other hand, Nayar could be just another global male defined by a
sustainable logic that appeals to women such as Hurley. A patient listener
who makes her laugh given her other relationships. Maybe he is better than
Grant and Bing put together, in bed or the seat of a BA flight. This,
assuming was discovered later might have added to his earlier attributes.
A common catchphrase here is, we Indians are like this only. Perhaps more
and more like everyone else.
Actress Aishwarya Rai has found her life partner in co-actor of several movies Abhishek Bachchan, son of the doyen of Indian cinema, the great Amitabh Bachchan, voted as the global actor of the millennium.
For long Aishwarya, a former Miss World, has defined the quintessential Indian beauty in western minds, appearing on the cover of Time magazine and the touchstone of popular American television, The Oprah Winfrey show.
Her persona has transcended much beyond what many consider average acting prowess, but as India’s global face has emerged in software, outsourcing and a vast untapped market, she has typified the perfect Indian woman to international audiences.
Somehow her acting abilities have not been in the same league as her printed pictures, her biggest movies Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam and Devdas shot quite a while back and her latest Umrao Jaan and Bride and Prejudice not doing well in the box office. Fans have panned her Oprah appearance in which she giggled more than she talked.
But, she has tried hard, even consciously moving away from the ``ice maiden’’ tag, by agreeing to kiss co-actor Hriktik Roshan in a recent release, Dhoom-11, predictably a runaway hit, though the scene reportedly had Abhishek squirming on his seat when he watched the movie for the first time.
In the past Aishwarya famously refused to star in a James Bond movie, apparently because she had to kiss Pierce Brosnan (who essayed the role at that time), as all Bond girls have to do.
However, in keeping with trends in contemporary Indian cinema and competition in the arena from peers such as Rani Mukherjee and Priety Zinta, Aishwarya did bite the lip, as the role demanded in Dhoom.
Still, as an actress Aishwarya will perhaps not be pegged among the all time greats, though her beauty is unparalleled.
Indeed, she is beautiful, to many many the most pretty, with captivating eyes and a face that can tantalize any male in the world.
That she chose Abhishek (could he say no, did he have a choice) has caught the imagination of the Indian media for a while now, earning them the sobriquet Abhiwarya, a blatant copy of the other hot paparazzi property, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie conflated as Brangelina.
The rumor mills about an impending marriage have been working wild for a while now. The two were engaged to be married this week, relegating every other news item including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to south east Asia, a far reaching energy pact and defense minister Pranab Mukerjee’s Pakistan sojourn.
The Bachchan’s and Rai’s are rooted to what is termed as traditional middle class values and have reportedly been consulting astrologers, pundits and sages that reside across the country.
The Bachchans (Amitabh and actress wife Jaya Bhaduri, also a member of the Indian Parliament) have apparently been concerned about a planetary configuration around Aishwarya that makes her a Manglik (which means she is strong-willed and dominating woman).
This could still be okay, except that she reportedly belongs to a more virulent version of Manglik that could in turn shorten the life span of her husband, whoever he is.
Some added fuel to the fire by speculating that she has been unlucky to her former boyfriends, including the hotheaded Bollywood mega-star Salman Khan, who has since seeing her been to jail over a case related to hunting endangered wildlife and is fighting a case for allegedly mowing people while driving drunk.
Astrological matters can be quite tricky in Indian situations and many possible matches have not happened due to such pronouncements by pundits, believe it or not. Though, when it comes to Aishwarya, it is debate able, whether any man including Abhishek, would let such matters dictate.
But, the Bachchan Seniors have reportedly been a worried lot and have been visiting temples around the country in the last few months. The good thing about Indian pundits and astrologers is that they always have a solution to problems they plant in the heads of their clients.
As per the anti-dote, Aishwarya was reportedly recently married to the peepal tree (considered holy), in the religious city of Benaras, as it was ordained that her second husband would not suffer her negative planetary vibrations.
Thus, technically and astrologically this is going to be Aishwarya’s second marriage and Abhishek’s first. What if the peepal tree turned into a handsome prince if/when Aishwarya garlanded it? Problem.
Most predictions are that the marriage will go the distance, with many babies to follow soon as Aishwarya approaches her mid-30s and Abhishek a couple of years younger.
Apart from strong family foundations, Abhishek is also a steady and regular guy with no known vices, a factor that should be very important to Aishwarya.
In the past she has been in a tumultuous relationship with Salman, known for his wild ways and roughing up girlfriends. He beat up Aishwarya as well, even as jealousy and over possessiveness drove him to recklessness such as barging into her house and movie shoots, until the police had to warn him to keep away, after a complaint by Aishwarya’s father.
Plus, she stands to inherit the estimated Rs 2.5 billion fortune amassed by Abhishek’s parents, the one sister happily married to a top Indian business family. Not that Aishwarya needs the money, given the very high fees she charges for movies and endorsements. But, it helps.
Abhishek probably holds the Indian record of maximum number of flop movies since making his debut as an actor a few years back (this also cost him personally as his then girlfriend, actress Karishma Kapoor chose to break the marriage engagement rather than be associated with a failed actor). The Bachchans had reportedly even purchased a bungalow for the couple to move in.
But courtesy Bachchan Senior, known for his extremely good inter-personal skills and an enormous reputation in the industry (in his mid 60s he still commands the highest price for movies and brand endorsements), the roles kept coming for Abhishek. Sometimes it pays to be born with a silver spoon.
To his credit, Abhishek has found his groove, worked hard on his acting and dancing skills, developed a loyal fan following and delivered hits such as Dhoom-11, Sarkar, Bluffmaster and Bunty aur Babli. His latest release Guru (his past few have predictably been with Aishwarya) is already being touted as a runaway hit, with critics praising his acting.
Abhishek thus knows how to create his own space living in the shadow of a father who is a legend. Now, he has another living legend for a wife.
For millions of Aishwarya fans, one can only hope that she continues to act and mesmerize even after marriage and babies as other contemporaries such as Kajol and Karishma.
But, it will not be the same. Can it?
Shilpa Shetty Arouses Interest (January 2007)
It was understandable when the top echelons of the UK government reacted to the apparent racist slurs bestowed in a British reality show on Indian actress Shilpa Shetty.
Racism is a major issue that western populations, including immigrants, have had to deal with since time. It is not so in India.
Thus, it has been the unexpected reactions from top Indian government quarters, including ministers and the foreign office that have spoken out in their official capacities that have been a bit unusual.
Till the recent past an issue revolving around Shilpa would have found plenty of presence on TV channels and Internet blogs (especially expressions by immigrant populations who perhaps face racist jibes in their daily existence), as has happened this time as well.
In India, Shilpa is the kind of controversy the TV channels always relish.
It is a good mix. Shilpa, not much of an actress (not many in Bollywood are in any case, given the role of most women as an attractive add on to the main plot) possesses one of the best bodies among Indian female stars and a fantastic dancer due to which some of most popular songs in recent Indian film history have been pictured on her. This is of course more than enough to arouse plenty of viewers interest.
As has become common practice now, a few unemployed youth this time in the state of Bihar, who perhaps are unaware of the alphabets of the English language, burnt a few white effigies representing British executives, to earn their two-minute fame on TV centered round the Shilpa episode.
The verbal attack on her would have (and has) died down once a new set of images have appeared, such as the latest slapping incident of the coach of the Indian cricket team by a crazed fan in the state of Orissa, where a match is to be played. Should the foreign office comment on this as well?
However, what has been a bit unusual is the alacrity with which the Indian establishment has reacted to an incident in a second grade reality show, desperately seeking to widen its audience base by roping in a failing Indian actress, who has agreed to participate for purely commercial reasons. Such government agility is definitely required, but in many other spheres of government functioning that continue to be woeful.
To explain a bit more, the Indian politician is a selfish creature with an eye always on votes and thinks about every means, whether for the good or bad, to influence various vote banks. Religion and caste, for example, are potent tools often used to coalesce support. In this context, racism becomes a bit of a misnomer, as it does not exist in India.
Thankfully, it is also not as if Shilpa was physically harmed in any way, which would have listed as a crime, with Indian diplomats helping the law take its course. As a matter of fact Shilpa has spoken against any racial attack in the show, clearly at the instance of the channel bosses who are paying her a fat paycheck, more than all other participants in the show. There is also the fear of more sponsors withdrawing and the show being scrapped. To repeat, racism is a big issue in the west.
Yet, it does not explain or merit the Indian government’s involvement. There is the India’s pride has been hurt argument, given India’s colonial past, but does not hold too much basis. Majority of the Indian population is very young and don’t know a bit about being ruled by a foreign power.
These youth are more concerned about acquiring the right skills to be absorbed into fast growing and very lucrative Services sector that ranges from software to outsourcing, hospitality, retail, finance and banking and more. They see a very bright future for themselves and a country on the threshold of many good things.
They expect the government of the day to deliver on what is required, infrastructure, law and order and an efficient regulatory system that comes into play in a very macro sense. Otherwise, individualism and merit should be respected.
Indeed, the Indian politician and power holders, it seems, are becoming increasingly aware of what has been termed as ``middle class sensibilities.’’
For so long used to dealing with a an illiterate or semi-illiterate population that formed the maximum number of voters, the middle classes fast approaching the 400 million number are beginning to be counted.
They are empowered by education and have no limits to the kind of economic prosperity that awaits them, given the sprinkling of millionaires and billionaires that seem to prop up from anywhere in India now.
It is a global phenomenon as well. The emerging global middle-class of China, India, Russia, Brazil and elsewhere has been ranked at the seventh position in the “50 who matter now” list published by a recognized international forum.
``This emerging class is looking forward to enjoying a more comfortable way of life. These newly affluent consumers also have the money to spend — estimated at over US$1 trillion a year,’’ the magazine said.
Thus, on the positive side the Indian politician is beginning to be aware of the massive thinking population, which is a sign of a maturing democracy.
For example, there is an emerging political consensus about economic reforms, development and change. No party in power can now afford not to leave its imprint on pushing India to a higher trajectory of growth, better infrastructure, competition and employment.
Even the left parties are siding with the Tata Group in West Bengal to acquire land for an automobile factory. Of course market forces must apply to everybody including farmers who can only be happy when paid premiums for the prime land they hold. Development needs to be participative.
On the issue of reservations in educational institutions for backward castes, the government has ensured that there is a commensurate hike in number of seats for general category students, who mostly belong to the middle classes.
But, at the same time the political class has not fully figured out the issues to talk about, express their opinions on or meet expectations.
One benchmark is to look at the media that is closely followed by middle India. But, TV is now increasingly about escapism and what is being watched during ones leisure time does not essentially translated into a matter that the viewer wants the government to act upon. Certainly, not name calling Shilpa Shetty.
The Shilpa episode clearly shows that the Indian politician, as in the past, is trying to adapt. Past strategies cannot be easily forgotten, but new ones are being adopted. This can only be for the good, though as far as the insult to Shilpa goes it should have been better to keep the mouth shut.
Kissing James Bond In India (January 2004)
Invoking feelings of pride for the entire sub-continent, India's top actress, Aishwarya Rai, has been approached to play the "Bond girl" opposite Pierce Brosnan, a coveted role consistently filled by some of Hollywood's sexiest ladies - most recently Academy Award winner Halle Berry.
In the interviews that have followed the announcement, Rai has been asked the same question time and time again - will she kiss James Bond, as most Bond girls do, quite willingly? Rai has been circumspect, knowing the Indian media all too well. Even an unsuspecting remark could be a headline: "Rai will kiss Brosnan", or "Rai prepared to bond with Bond", or "Rai will go all the way".
Rai told the British press that she has agreed to appear in the next James Bond film if its producers agree to use a body double for the sex scenes, noting that her strict upbringing meant there was no question of her doing anything saucy. "I've said I will do the film if there is a body double.
The producers have said they will have to ask Pierce," she said. Pierce can't be happy. The focus here, though, has been on the kiss, as most writers have ruled out sex. Indeed, a top Bollywood actress kissing on the screen is as close to going all the way as Indians are accustomed too - by Bollywood standards.
Handsome as Brosnan may be, Rai's answers have been neutral, from, "I have not thought about it," to "We will have to wait and see, I have made no such commitments." A kiss in this country is a big deal. It has affected relations between India and Pakistan, although at most times it takes much less.
A furor was created a couple of years back when prominent author Khushwant Singh planted a party peck on the daughter of the then Pakistani high commissioner Ashraf Jehangir Qazi. Tenuous India-Pakistan relations took a further tumble.
Qazi scurried off to Islamabad to kiss the feet of then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, explaining that the whole of Pakistan need not be outraged. Worldwide, of course, a kiss always makes news that is given prominent coverage in India. Former US president Bill Clinton went as far as regularly kissing his wife Hillary on the forehead. He didn't feel the need to go any further.
Tennis great Andre Agassi likes to plant sweaty lingering kisses on his wife, Steffi Graf, between shots and games. She doesn't seem to mind. Not too long ago Agassi did it to Brooke Shields, who also did not seem to mind. Continuing with the tennis world, the Williams sisters are regularly planted a kiss by their father in appreciation of the good work they are putting in.
In the runaway hit Pretty Woman, Julia Roberts' most "personal kiss" happened to be on the mouth, although she uses it on every other part of Richard Gere's anatomy.
Indian girls have routinely been in the news for "kissing indiscretions" that have not gone down too well with the population. Young, over-eager and beautiful actress Padmini Kolhapuri went "all the way" with Prince Charles. His royal highness was in the news again shortly after in India for the "not-so-eager kiss" by the late Princess Diana that sent the tabloids into a tizzy.
Also worth noting was actress Shabana Azmi, who planted a "freedom kiss" on South Africa's Nelson Mandela, which caused a lot of heartburn in the country.
We are a liberal country, not in the mold of Pakistan, but can be just as prudish when our women kiss - or are kissed - by men who don't belong here. The only instances of public kissing here involve foreigners.
There is always a crowd of hangers-on who accumulate for a closeup of the action, which can happen on a street or a market place. The big question, however, remains: with Internet porn, explicit pictures and video just a click away, why, then, is kissing such an issue in the land of Kama Sutra and Khajuraho? There have been several explanations to this phenomenon.
First, it is the stereotype of the Hindi movies, the most popular mass culture phenomenon apart from cricket. (There is little scope for kissing in cricket, as only men play it, and mostly just men watch it.) In the Hindi movies the kiss is a really big happening, if it happens at all. Hindi songs are not only about running around trees, but also gyrations that approximate making love with clothes on and from a distance.
But when it comes to a real kiss, the world shakes and the heavens come down. A recent example that attracted attention was the "rain kiss" in the movie Raja Hindustani in which the two top stars, Karishma Kapoor and Aamir Khan, kiss each other.
The clouds thundered, lightening struck and the rain grew heavier as the lips touched. The common explanation by producers and directors as well as the censor board is that Hindi movies are family outings; so kissing is a no-no. But the most brutal violence on screen escapes any cuts. Recent crossover movies aimed at non-resident Indians and English-speaking urban audiences are bolder.
One has the pleasure of watching the absolutely ravishing Lisa Ray kissing in Bollywood Hollywood. There were a number of full-throated scenes with Rahul Khanna, well shot with Lisa putting up a sterling performance.
Then there was the movie called Khwaish that was released a few months ago. It stars two newcomers who are being actively sought due to the 17 kissing scenes in the movie. Recent surveys have indicated that promiscuity as well as frequency of sex among Indians is on the rise.
Yet it is not as if smooching happens in public places here. Another reason for the coy approach is the laws that prosecute for public obscenity - including kissing. Indian cops, generally a lethargic lot, are eagle-eyed about couples on the loose in gardens, parks, cars or on any corner. It's the easiest money-earner. One more explanation, far-fetched though, is the weather.
It is hot most of the time, requiring air-conditioning for kissing in the open. This writer, however, attributes it to kismet - bad karma in the past - that has resulted in kisses being such misses in this great nation.
Sex, Britney, Cameron, Kareena and Mallika…..
For all those -- the truth is, there are millions, perhaps a billion --- who trawl the Internet fishing for fresh porn and similar stuff, it can get no better.
There is oral talk from Britney Spears husband for 55 hours who has dished out all that happened when they went about their business as a married couple; there is Cameroz Diaz who is busy trying to erase She’s No Angel, a 30-minute soft porn video of hers on the Internet; there has been Paris Hilton’s One Night in Paris; Baywatch star Gena Lee Nolin bared it all in a mattress romp.
In the recent past, there has been the homemade videotape of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee that has been a rage since 1997 on the Internet. Further in history there have been Marilyn Monroe and later Sylvester Stallone.
Pamela-Paris as well as others associated with the release of such private celebrity material which are hot-sellers on porn sites have gone on to make pots of money, with the stakes only higher as technology has improved over time.
Today, estimates of the annual revenue for adult entertainment film sales and rentals and website subscription fees range from $8-10 billion. In such a global scenario, it seems that Indians too want to join the party, where boldness and obviously bareness is fast becoming the credo.
It could be more than just a co-incidence that top Indian actors Kareena Kapoor and Shahid Kapur have gone to town about their relationship, though the stuff they do together has a much more dignified air than the things Britney’s ex-hubby has talked about.
A prominent Indian actress is considering an offer to appear on Playboy which obviously will be beyond just a bikini spread; two Indian girls are running successful porn sites in the USA; there is a bandwagon effect of top Indian actresses on a kissing spree; a bold movie on lesbianism, a series of Bollywood movies on affairs outside marriage --- the themes are getting barer and so are Indian women who parade the wide spectrum of India’s glamour industry, with porn completing the widest loop.
There is bound to be an overall ripple effect, for the good or the bad.
The caveat first. It must be remembered that India still exists at two levels which the defeated Bharatiya Janata Party realized a bit late in the day after their ``Shining India’’ campaign boomeranged --- the urban pockets of affluence where the traditional stereotype of the Indian woman who raises kids and looks after her husband at the cost of professional achievement is being continually shaken; and the other India where one hears of a Hindu boy being burnt for loving a Muslim girl or the dreaded ``culture police’’ composed of the fringe elements of Hindu fundamentalists who still believe that it is anathema for a girl and a boy to hold hands in public.
Now, for the bits of breaking of barriers, wherein no Indian woman has gone before in arenas of competition that remain the most mass cultural influences on Indian society --- movies, television and the expanding internet. Angela Devi and Sunny Leone are two Indian girls who have hit big time in the US porn industry that is estimated to be worth anywhere between $ 4 billion and $ 10 billion.
Indian girls feature regularly in international porn sites, but never have any carried the tag of being stars, meriting a front-page display in a national newspaper here.
Angela, 25, was born to Delhi migrants in New Delhi and has been living in Phoenix, Arizona for the past 17 years. Her credits include regular appearances in hardcore magazine Hustler since 2002 and voyeuristic videos. Sunny, 23, came of her own when she was named Penthouse’s Pet of the Year a few months back. Both Angela and Sunny also run successful websites.
The ``success’’ of Angela and Sunny may be dismissed by some as Indians taking on a different hue in the USA, working hard and making a mark in any endeavor of their choosing normally as computer engineers, doctors, teachers, taxi-drivers, a couple of film makers and an odd Bobby Jindal making a pitch for governor of Louisiana.
It’s a matter of adding porn to the list in challenging times. But, the story is not limited to Indians in USA. Here, Mallika Sherwat who has set scorching standards in her bare-dare movies --- two till now, the first Khwaish which broke any Indian record of maximum 19 kisses and the second Murder which was an equal encore --- has been offered to pose for the center spread of the venerable Playboy magazine that has catapulted so many to stardom. This is the first such offer to an Indian star, though a few have appeared in mainstream news magazines.
Mallika’s publicist has said that the actress is considering the proposal and going by her past performances it looks unlikely that she is going to reject the chance in a lifetime.
In yet another coup Mallika will also be the only Indian star to feature in a Jackie Chan movie and there is talk that it involves at least one nude scene as well, though the actress has been going to town insisting that there is no such episode.
The success of Khwaish and Murder and by extension Mallika has sent the rest of Bollywood actresses in a tizzy, with several now shaking off their traditional Indian mores to break free.
The first off the block is a starlet in the form of Neha Dhupia who in her second movie release called Julie is set to bare her backside, the first such happening in a mainstream Bollywood fare. A former Miss India, Dhupia’s uncut nude and love making scenes from the movie are already doing the rounds on the Internet.
Not to be undone, Kareena Kapoor has added spice to the powerful Govind Nihalani film Dev on the Gujarat riots of 1992, by allowing her co-star Fardeen Khan complete play with her lips. Another star Mahima Chowdury, who famously spurned top director Subhash Ghai who wanted her to strip a little a few years back, will be featuring in a series of lip-clinchers with much older co-star Anupam Kher in the movie Chess.
Bollywood’s prima dona Aishwaria Rai, has reportedly shared some close chemistry with real life beau and actor Vivek Oberoi in a yet to be released movie. Rai was considered the epitome of prudery, keeping a safe distance from most of her co-stars on-screen, till now. Of course the readymade answer to why this sudden change in screen prudery: ``the script demanded it,’’ the starlets pout in unison.
Indian actresses on a kissing spree also follows Bollywood’s experiments with several bold themes connected to extra-marital affairs, one-night stands in movies such as Tum, Raaz, Murder among others.
One recent release in this genre is a movie called Girlfriend, is the story of two lesbians, quite trashy by any standards but inviting a lot of publicity due to the theme.
The movie raised the hackles of the ``culture brigade’’ in the form of the Shiv Sena --- regional party of Maharashtra with affiliations to the BJP --- whose activists are attacking cinema halls playing the film, accusing the producer and director of polluting Indian society.
The same people had reacted similarly a few years back to the movie Fire, starring top actresses Nandita Das and Shabana Azmi, on the same theme.
All the boldness in one broad field of activity would of course come to a naught if Indian women were not making headways in other areas, not connected only to matters of a few exposures and suggested sex. The news is both good and bad.
The unshackling of the Indian economy, the increased role of the private service sector and emergence of multinationals over the past few years is also witnessing a slow, albeit definite rise of women managers and entrepreneurs who are beginning to take charge.
This is a long way from results thrown by several surveys in the 90s that did not reveal more than a handful (less than two digits) of powerful Indian women in the corporate sector. A recent study has shown that the number of successful girl geeks in India’s vaunted Information Technology sector has also grown exponentially.
Bollywood itself is witnessing the emergence of filmmakers such as Tanuja Chandra, Farah Khan, Pooja Bhatt, Ekta Kapoor who are making successful movies.
The flip side is the alarming drop in the sex ratio --- the number of women per thousand men --- across the country, with the steepest fall in urban pockets, which says a sordid story of destroying the female fetus and killing the girl child. As reminded earlier, India still exists on two planes, one that is setting its own standards and another where a girl is never born. It’s a tragic and happy mix.
Why Hurley went for Nayar
There are all over the pages here again. Liz Hurley and Arun Nayar,
consequent to their wedding plans, setting off the commonly encountered
debate relating the two.
Hurley has been in the spotlight for some time now, as Hugh Grant's
girlfriend, the Double Whammy and Bedazzled star and a beautiful woman
whose personal life interests everyone.
Nayar, until recently, was known in pockets of Europe where his business
interests lie and Mumbai where he originates. He is handsome, successful, a
charmer (the press reports say so), with pots of money and not too happy
with his wife --- ideal conditions for another woman to walk into his life.
It happened to be Hurley, in a similar personal situation. Lucky him.
Contrasted to her fame, he is near anonymous and should recede to his
relatively faceless existence, were she to drop him. Unless he is smart and
cruel and writes a book on how and where to make out with Hurley, like many
have done with Princess Diana.
Still, after millions more, a couple of months facing flashlights, he should
disappear from collective consciousness, when the media forgets him (viz
Chicago) while Hurley will endure, through her movies/endorsements, looks,
or the next man she chooses.
Right now, though, in the company of Hurley, Nayar is always news ---
holding her hand at Cannes or inside the British Airways flight where things
got a trifle hot between them for passenger comfort or a discreet visit with
her to home town Mumbai, that was well caught by the tabloids here.
The question is: should an Indian man going out with a Hollywood diva be
considered a national achievement? Or did Nair get plain lucky? To put the
query in correct perspective: Ever since Bollywood heart throb Madhuri Dixit
married an Indian doctor settled in the USA, many similar doctors across the
world feel they stand a chance with Bollywood starlets and rue they did not
woo Dixit.
In the same breath, should every tangible Indian male consider himself worth
a shot whenever a Hollywood actress finds herself single or is on the
rebound, ditched by a former boyfriend? Binged, in Hurley terms.
It is difficult to estimate why Hurley went for Nayar, as women are
inscrutable, but there are arguments being bandied here. First --- the vital
stats, which can be an important factor. The beauty and the beast is a fairy
tale.
How much of Nayar is Indian looks? Did she spot him at a do and say,
``oooooh, he looks so Indian.'' Drool drool. Would it have made a
difference to Hurley if Nair were not an Indian? Well, looks wise, he could
pass of as a Pakistani, Fijian, Sri Lankan, Malaysian, Saudi Arabian. Even
Afghan or Iraqi. Some say he looks a bit like Saddam Hussein's elder son
Uday, dead or alive, with a different hairstyle.
Arguments of nationality being a factor are thus eliminated, though, to be
fair, Hurley probably would not have gone for Nair if he did look like Uday.
The only male in this region to attract women anywhere in the world on
sheer brute looks was Pakistan's former cricketer, the charismatic, though
now aging and struggling politician Imran Khan. But, Nayar is no Khan.
To delve deeper --- what is it that attracts western beauties to India or
things Indian, in the first place? Kate Winslet, Goldie Hawn have visited
India. Nicol Kidman dropped by incognito, in dark glasses and a salwar
kameez, though everyone recognized her.
These incredibly beautiful women arrived for spiritual solace, yoga,
alternative healing, meditation and making peace with their tumultuous
professional and personal lives. They didn't come chasing Indian men.
It is unlikely that Hurley went for Nair's spirituality, not in designer
suit. There is lots of snooping going around (very soon we should see them
naked on the internet, beach bathing, which could already be a search engine
away.)
But, one hasn't read anything that suggests that Nayar interprets tomes of
Hindu philosophy, reasoning to Hurley that Grant with pants down and a
prostitute was just the play of Maya, the truth that such a happening in the
ultimate analysis does not exist.
Nayar wouldn't, even if he did read about Maya. Lets grant him this much.
Nair's loss could be Grant's gain. He certainly is not the spiritual Indian
eyed by western beauties to discover their souls sitting by his knee. If it
was not Hurley, it could have been anyone else, equally beautiful, perhaps
not as famous. Nayar seemed ripe for it.
Money is not a factor here; it is but there are too many millionaires in her
circuit. It is the least common eligibility factor. She is hiring a private
jet on her own steam, to fly cozy with Nair rather than BA executive class;
she shouldn't need anyone else's dough.
On the other hand, Nayar could be just another global male defined by a
sustainable logic that appeals to women such as Hurley. A patient listener
who makes her laugh given her other relationships. Maybe he is better than
Grant and Bing put together, in bed or the seat of a BA flight. This,
assuming was discovered later might have added to his earlier attributes.
A common catchphrase here is, we Indians are like this only. Perhaps more
and more like everyone else.
Sportingly
In India, cricket is finally Americanized (June 2008)
Cricket is India’s most passionate sport. The new shortened and fast-paced avatar T20 is a huge success, competing with staple entertainment avenues, Hindi movies and television soaps.
Some have called T20 the Americanization of cricket, packaged and delivered in a high-action, high-impact capsule, like basketball or boxing.
Fans have loved it so that observers now say that T20 cricket with 3-hours play time (the length of an average Bollywood movie) could eventually end up replacing the full one-day format.
The longest five-day test match version should, however, survive, given the millions of purist followers of the ``gentleman’s game’’ originally played by aristocratic Englishmen.
This Sunday the Indian Premier League (IPL) series (the first big-ticket club cricket tournament in India) ended after weeks of non-stop league action that brought the country to a virtual standstill every evening when the matches were played and telecast live. An estimated 25-million watched the finals.
Though cricket is played and followed in Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, West Indies, England, it is the zealous Indian fans and consequent multinational sponsorships given the huge reach that has sustained the economics of the game worldwide.
Indian cricketers from diverse backgrounds, also reflect the premium on performance and merit. Indian captain M S Dhoni grew up in small town Ranchi (in eastern state Jharkhand), while another hero Iran Pathan studied at a madrassa (traditional Muslim school) in Gujarat.
Cricket is also about the only sport that India has managed to perform consistently at the highest levels. There was a time when India ruled hockey but the standards have fallen to levels that the team has not even qualified for the Beijing Olympics.
Thus the expectations of millions of cricket fans borders on the frenzied with cricketers routinely idolized as demigods or pilloried after every tournament, match and shot depending on the result. Everybody wants India to win every time which is not possible in sports.
The IPL follows the immensely successful T20 world cup last year in South Africa that India won and set the stage for another big event. Thus, the run up to IPL witnessed franchised team owners spending millions of dollars in auctions to procure the world’s best players.
The money doled out has raised similar questions, especially with soccer players, elsewhere in the world: will cricketers be more loyal to the club rather than donning national colors, which may be a less lucrative option.
Dhoni, for example, was bought at US$1.5 million, a handsome sum for a short duration tournament like IPL.
Each franchisee, in turn, is allotted rights in gate earnings, sponsors and from television.
Existing investors include big corporate names such as Mukesh Ambani (promoter Reliance Group) and Vijay Mallya (owner UB Group), Bollywood mega stars Shah Rukh Khan and Preity Zinta and corporations such as Deccan Chronicle, India Cements and construction company GMR.
The IPL is estimated to be worth US$4 billion with team-owners needing to fork out about US$125 million every-year to the Board of Cricket Control in India (BCCI), to retain their rights.
It is predicted that over the next few years T20 will earn cricket’s governing body, the International Cricket Council, US$1.5 billion from television rights alone.
Essentially, the change has come about in keeping with dwindling spectator attention span given fast paced lifestyles combined with the need for that quick adrenalin rush that only sports can provide.
The new game also seems best practiced by the young, who have imbibed fearlessness with gusto as there is simply no time to think in the short game. There is only one option with the bat --- to hit.
To add to the fun, the wham-bang cricket matches are peppered by American-style razzmatazz; there is much dance and music by big names and Bollywood stars (such as Salman Khan at the grand finale in Mumbai).
Professional cheerleaders in skimpy dresses imported from Europe and Australia, created some controversy with the local overzealous cultural hawks keen to ``protect’’ Indian ethos by threatening violence and disrupting matches.
There are fireworks and other pyrotechnics and the message has resounded clear as the many clean hits to the stands: that T20 is a massive hit with the audiences.
Indeed, snappy cricket was born at last year’s first world cup for the genre.
Even as the tournament progressed and India emerged champions, back home traffic dwindled with reports of innumerable appointments cancelled and even the usually efficient and hard working private sector took a pause, to toast the team.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh took time off to watch the final, closely contested between traditional rivals India and Pakistan that was eventually won off the last ball. The Indian team was given a rousing welcome back in Mumbai.
India played without the big three aging stars, considered cricketing gods, Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and Saurav Ganguly. The team with an average age of 24 years was among the youngest.
Yuvraj Singh emerged as the new youth icon smashing six sixes (ball hit in the air out of the boundary line) in an over against England in a do-or-die match, the maximum possible in an over, and that too against a frontline pace bowler.
Such a feat has been achieved only once in international cricket, against a slow bowler from a team on the fringes of commercial cricket. Each T20 game averaged 8-10 sixes compared to much less in the one-day format.
The IPL too has thrown up a set of young heroes, both Indian and international --- Shaun Marsh, Yousuf Pathan, Swapnil Asnodkar, Shane Watson, Sohail Tanvir, to name some.
Latest TV ratings indicate that women, the usual watchers of TV soaps, have also taken well to T20 cricket and also turned up in good numbers at the stadiums.
Unlike men in India, women are not avid watchers of cricket. Somehow, it doesn’t appeal to them. That has changed with T20.
The uncertainty, with fortunes changing by the ball and the non-stop action matches any reality TV show or soaps with sub-plots and twists by the minute.
Indeed, those feeling the pinch of IPL most are cinema theatres and the hugely popular TV soaps. It is expensive to watch a movie at a multiplex while cricket can be beamed for almost free.
A big banner Bollywood film “Tashan” starring top names Akshay Kumar (ironically, a brand ambassador for IPL team Delhi Daredevils), Saif Ali and Kareena Kapoor has hit the box-office dust.
``The evening shows (with highest audience) have been affected due to the matches,’’ a spokesman of a leading movie theatre has said.
Another movie that has suffered is Bhootnath, aimed at school kids on summer holiday, starring famous actor Amitabh Bachchan.
Mega star Shah Rukh Khan's (again ironically, IPL team owner of Kolkata Knight Riders) new TV-game show has also not been able to garner attention either. Cricket has been blamed again.
The game has changed forever.
India world champions of snazzy cricket (September 2007)
It is fast, furious and intense and fits into the country’s new credo of high energy, instant gratification, money and success, especially applicable to the young generation, most targeted by marketers in India.
The Indian sub-continent’s most passionate sport, cricket, has emerged in a fresh avatar fitted into a shorter time frame, accompanied by American style flamboyance and razzmatazz such as dancing cheer leaders, fireworks, fast music and more.
Twenty-Twenty cricket is the quick paced shortened and energized version as opposed to the original slam-bang daylong 50-overs-a-side or the 5-day test matches.
The team’s now have to slug it out like boxers or gladiators, going for the big hits, combining technique with raw power, the slog and dollops of luck, all packed into three hours of rapid action.
The uncertainty, with fortunes changing by the ball literally, and non-stop entertainment keeps the audience on the feet through the duration.
Essentially, the change has come about in keeping with dwindling spectator attention span given fast paced lives combined with the need for that adrenalin rush from sport.
Cricket, too had to change.
Indeed, over the last couple of weeks the first world championship and also the first tournament of the kind featuring top teams, in the new format has proved the skeptics wrong.
It has been a resounding success.
The icing has been an India-Pakistan grand finale played this Monday in South Africa that India won after a closely contested match that could have gone either way.
But the winner, was also the game of cricket, re-invented and served spiced up to sell-out crowds and TV audiences around the globe.
The matches were choc-a-bloc, TV ratings zoomed and given the eyeballs, advertisers have gone home happy despite paying broadcasters up to US $25,000 for a 10 second slot.
It is estimated that over the next eight years Twenty20-cricket will earn cricket’s governing body, the International Cricket Council, $1.5 billion from television rights alone.
In India, cricket ratings knocked off established soaps, musical contests and reality shows that have dominated, especially after the early exit of the Indian team from the world championship of the traditional slower form in the recent past.
The illegal satta (gambling) market has also been reporting brisk business.
An earlier India-Pakistan league match witnessed frenzied betting to the tune of a reported Rs 5 billion just in regions around commercial capital Mumbai.
Almost all 20-20 matches were fiercely fought with the result apparent at the end only.
Australia considered almost invincible into the tournament was humbled by the lowly rated Zimbabwe in an earlier round. The result was akin to Brazil or Germany beaten by USA in soccer.
India was almost knocked out and had the only option of winning by big margins to stay afloat. They managed it quite well.
Even as the tournament progressed and India emerged champions of snappy cricket, back home traffic dwindled with reports of appointments cancelled all over and the usually efficient and hard working private sector took a pause, to toast the team.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh too took time off to watch the final.
The new game seems best practiced by the young and fearless. India was without the big three aging stars, considered the cricketing gods of India, Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and Saurav Ganguly. The Indian team with an average age of 24 years was among the youngest.
Yuvraj Singh emerged as the new icon smashing six sixes in an over against England in a do-or-die match, the maximum possible in an over, and that too against a frontline pace bowler.
Such a feat has been achieved only once at the international level in the entire history of the game, and that too against a slow bowler from a team on the fringes of commercial cricket.
Yuvraj also scored the fastest 50 runs off 12 balls compared to the international record of 20 balls in the thousands of matches played till now.
The intensity of the new game will ensure that Yuvraj’s feat, considered near impossible till very recently, will be replicated and possibly improved in the future, given the number of sixes that have rained in the tournament.
Each game averaged 8-10 sixes compared to 3-4 in the most exciting one-day tournament.
Fans have loved it so that observers now say that 20-20 cricket would end up replacing the one day format, though the longest test matches should survive, given the millions of purist followers of the game.
Though cricket is played and followed in Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, West Indies, England, it is the zealous Indian following and consequent multinational sponsorships given the big market and reach that has sustained the economics of the game.
Cricket is about the only sport that India has managed to perform consistently at the world stage.
Thus the expectations of fans, across social, caste and religions, borders on the frenzied with cricketers routinely raised to the level of demigods or pilloried after almost every match, depending on the result.
Cricketers and film stars are by far the most adored celebrities in India, minting millions as brand ambassadors of sundry products
Cricketers from diverse backgrounds, also reflect the myriad and often complex structures. Captain M S Dhoni grew up in small town Ranchi, while another hero Iran Pathan studied at a madrassa.
Indeed before 20-20-cricket, Bollywood, India’s huge film industry has been quick to catch the pulse of the new generation. A recent global survey voted Indian youth as the happiest given the high expectations, jobs, income and changing lifestyles.
Bollywood has churned out four super hits in the recent past, Lagaan, Rang de Basanti, Lage Raho Munnabhai and the latest Chak de India.
Each has showcased a never dying attitude, victory for the underdog and fighting against the odds. Lagaan was cleverly woven around a cricket match during India’s colonial past, with a team of peasants taking on the oppressors, the British rulers.
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In the latest big hit Chak de India, super star Shahrukh Khan turns a band of rag-tag girls into a world-beating hockey team.
The girls end up beating the Australians in the world cup finals. Importantly, there is no Pakistan to drum up the obvious national fervor. The emphasis is on hard work, tactics and strategy to beat professional teams.
Shahrukh, incidentally, was present at the 20-20 final in Johannesburg, to cheer the Indian team.
Cricket and Bollywood often feed on each other, providing film directors, sponsors and advertisers a potent cocktail of themes or brand images woven around the two genres or stars
It was, thus fitting, that India won. But, tomorrow is another day and Indian cricketers know all too well that the fans are only going to expect more.
There is a dire need to promote other sports to levels of excellence in India so that new heroes emerge.
For now, though, India is very happy with its cricketers.
Cricket over Politics
The past month has been a bit of a unique mix for this country. Two subjects, cricket and politics that grip the nation most passionately have been at the forefront of public minds.
The Indian cricket team is on a historic trip to Pakistan, with the two neighbors playing each other in either country for the first time in 15 years, a period that has witnessed the Kargil conflict and near-war like situations with troops amassed along the border.
The month of April-May will witness the nation electing a new government at the Center, with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress, the two main parties vying for votes.
And as was expected when it comes to a choice between cricket and politics, the country is universal in its preference --- it is cricket. To start with, many politicians, including stalwarts such as Andhra Pradesh chief minister Chandrababu Naidu expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that cricket was being made to overlap with the run-up to the elections.
The complaint was that people would simply not vote if a match were to be played on voting days, which will be in phases over two months. The other problem was that it would be difficult to draw crowds at election rallies during match days that extended to five one-day internationals and three test matches (a total of 20 days of actual play apart from the pre and post-match hype).
The overlap did not happen as the Election Commission played it safe by ensuring that the voting days fall after the series is over.
The other predicament is very much on and making matters worse politically is that the series is turning out to be a closely fought one. Facing the brunt of cricket is Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani who is on a country wide Rath Yatra (caravan) across the country proclaiming the BJP message.
People simply do not turn up to listen to Advani when a match is on. Advani has resorted to fitting wide television screens either side of his caravan bus, telecasting the matches live to draw the crowds. He peppers his speech with the latest score in order to keep the crowds updated and humored.
Advani’s is not the only dilemma. News reports from across the country tell the same story --- sparse crowds at election rallies whether India is batting or fielding. Such is the interest that even film stars, the one perennial weapon used in politics to draw the crowds have failed.
Major political parties have assigned staff to monitor the match days so that no big announcements such as release of manifesto or a press conference by any leader of standing happens if India is doing well.
This is to prevent being relegated to inside pages of newspapers or the post-commercial slots in television news, as cricket takes the front slots. Regular party briefings are postponed during match days to prevent journalists being inconvenienced.
Election speeches with cricket lingo are the order of the day for maximum response from the crowds. In a recent speech Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said that the number three is lucky for the country as well as him.
This is the third time that he would be Prime Minister if the BJP won, the Indo-Pak peace process was a result of his third attempt after Lahore and Agra and Virendra Sehwag has become the first Indian ever to score a triple century during the ongoing series. Sehwag drew the biggest cheers.
Others have also joined the cricket bandwagon. Chief Minister of Gujarat Narendra Modi sought to make amends to his personal attack on Congress President Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul by saying that in such a big electoral match-up no balls and wide-balls are bound to be delivered.
There is a perpetual race to send congratulatory messages across the border each time India performs well.
Vajpayee, Sonia Gandhi as well as sundry other politicians wire instant missives to individual players as well as the team for every victory or milestone. The Indian team that has been performing quite well over the past couple of years has perhaps never received so many posts for one series.
The BJP and the Congress have also been at pains to put each other down on where the credit for cricket should lie.
Each time India wins, the BJP makes it a point to club ``India winning’’ with its election campaign of ``India Shining’’ while at the same time reiterating that the matches are being played due to the initiative of Vajpayee, in the first place.
The Congress, on the other hand, uses every sophistry to convey that the achievements of the cricketers should be seen as such and not as a victory of the BJP, which the party is trying to portray.
It is true that cricket is the one opium that unites the country like none else. While politics is about vote-banks whether based on caste, creed, religion or the rich and poor, cricket cuts across all social barriers.
Top corporate offices as well as roadside vendors witness people in well-heeled suits and ragged clothes glued onto televisions sets. One of the best performers during the one-day series was Mohammed Kaif, a Muslim who has the whole-hearted support and wishes of every Hindu in this country.
Sehwag, the toast of Indian cricket, belongs to a lower middle-class family, driving a scooter to work, until he made it big. Other stars such as Rahul Dravid and V V S Laxman belong to middle-class erudite families of professionals.
The captain Saurav Ganguly comes from a well-settled business family. Indian icon Sachin Tendulkar grew up playing local cricket in the maidans (playing fields) of Mumbai.
All the big names from diverse backgrounds above are linked by one parameter --- performance, a microcosm for the entire nation striving for the ideal of unity in diversity.
It is no wonder that when the Indian team performs well one billion people celebrate. It is also apparent why the people of India prefer cricket to politics --- no sectarianism, no religious fanaticism, no pseudo-secularism. Cricket is all about hitting a six or taking a good catch. It cannot get simpler and straighter.
The cricketers themselves have been under pressure to balance the needs of diplomacy that demands best behavior with the cutthroat competition of international cricket where sledging and frayed on-field tempers are the order of the day.
Before embarking on the tour, Vajpayee personally told the players that their aim should also be to win hearts.
The cricket matches so far have been mostly free of any fracas and played with a fair amount of spirit. Indian fans who have traveled in the thousands have been treated to warm hospitality by the hosts.
As far as people are concerned it is clear that the peace process enjoys full support. And, it is the performers who are always revered first.
Will baseball catch on in India (September 2003)
Things American are already a rage here, the latest being `Charlie's Angels'. But, the current debate is about baseball and the reluctance of Indians to imbibe the sport.
Two baseball experts flew into India recently to teach Indians baseball know-how and, predictably, invited considerable attention. Their effort is part of India's amateur baseball federation's move to boost the game in the country, and add further drops to the ocean of America that exists here.
Symbols of American life that pervade India include kids grown up on MTV lingo, `Friends' and HBO, sounding more American than Americans. Pepsi and Coke, Pizza Hut and Macdonald's, CNN and Fox, Kentucky Fried Chicken and IBM, have set up shop and are a part of every day life and culture and also the subject of public ire each time there is a ventilation of anti-American sentiments.
News follows Christian Amanpour as much as Britney Spears or Jennifer Aniston. `Bruce Almighty' registered a good opening while Julia Roberts is the Pretty Woman and India's Sweetheart as well. A mass of Indians employed as call center executives masquerade as Americans (Reena becomes Ron) on phone, catering to a Citibank account holders' inquiries from Oklahoma.
Indians also know that George Bush's (mis) pronunciations on TV affect their lives as much as Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee -- an attack on Iraq that can wreck stock market fortunes here or a meet with President Musharraf of Pakistan at Camp David that is a matter of life and death in Kashmir. Jay Leno jokes abound.
But, it is in sports that American influence has been rather limited. Indians don't understand American football and don't play baseball. Basketball is practiced by a few, while boxing news is limited to Evander Holyfield in the ring and Mike Tyson off it.
If there is one game that has taken recent root in the country, it is golf, proven by the proliferation of golf courses in the last few years. But, this has been more of a corporate effort than a people response, which means golf is fast turning into a popular game of the rich.
Further, golf is as European as American. Similarly, there is an increasing stock of people interested in Formula-1 racing and bowling.
But baseball is as true as American can be. Thus, when two American baseball coaches arrived here, the talk centered around why do Indians who have taken to every American facet, including accent, like fish to water, resist baseball?
The answer lies in a continental divide. What baseball is to America, soccer is to Europe, cricket is to the Indian sub-continent consisting of Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and India.
If Europe cannot look beyond David Beckham, whom Americans ignored on his recent trip to promote football in the US, Indians cannot see beyond Sachin Tendulkar, the cricketing God of India.
This writer is not aware of a single baseball player. Only that Michael Jordan is, or till recently was, the God of America and Reebok -- or was it Nike. If Sachin steps out of his house in India, David in England, Michael in America, it is news as flashy as it can get.
When golf made its hesitant beginnings in India, a prominent coach from the famous David Leadbetter academy said, “Indians will never learn how to play golf as they can play no game unlike cricket. So, a slice is a cover drive to the right and a hook is an on-drive to the left.''
The coach was wrong -- Indians took to golf and there is a legion of Indian golfers now, making more money than most cricketers, which was just a dream a while ago.
But, will the golf case mean baseball can succeed as well? To reverse the question, could cricket translate into an American success, like Indian curry and `Bend it Like Beckham'? What are the chances of Sachin Tendulkar turning God in America? He is an icon in England, South Africa and Australia, where Donald Bradman is on the pedestal.
Essentially, cricket and baseball look similar on TV. There is a guy who chucks the ball, another who wields the bat, catchers all around and, to make a run, you need to run.
If the two are just different garbs, and sports as we know can bring people together, as was attempted by the recent US-Iraq football match, baseball and cricket should build further bridges between India and US.
It will not be so easy. Indeed, to make any beginning, one has to further ask whether Americans would like to watch Sachin on Oprah, or would Oprah feature Sachin.
This writer wouldn't watch an unnamed baseball star on a TV chat show here -- Sachin on ESPN/Star Sports any day. It is the icons that create a particular sporting spirit -- Germany took to tennis after Boris Becker, Beligum, after Justin Henin, and the world has taken to golf after Tiger Woods.
Sports can be an intense personal choice -- hamburgers from Macdonald's may not be changing filiations, but here it is a matter of changing Gods -- from Sachin to Michael or vice versa. It can be an impossible decision or a matter of time. Unless Anna Kournikova chooses to play both, which has nothing to do with God or tennis.
Birdie for all
A few years back New Delhi, the capital of India, boasted of just one 18-hole golf course. There are over a dozen now. Several Indian golfers are making it big in the international circuit and many starry-eyed parents now perceive golfing as a viable career choice for their wards, given the millions in prize money.
There have been many more changes --- a few years back there were no multiplexes, malls, bowling alleys --- they dot the urban landscape now, providing wholesome entertainment, combining food, drink, movies and a bit of exercise. But, this one is about golf.
While the Indian population still remains largely cricket-crazed, golf is generating cultural frissons, giving rise to sporting stereotypes as well as the experience of a global sport that has caught on here.
As a lesser golfer, struggling with the game, one pores over tomes of literature, hopes to hire the best of instructors even if they are unaffordable, spend time and money, yet the muffed shots count the same.
The struggle becomes an obsession even as the mind tries to fathom more complex techniques, the grip and stance, numerous anatomical parts are mentally diagnosed, length and thickness of fingers are analyzed, psychiatric and mental exercises are prescribed.
Feroz Ali, India's leading golfer, recently said that he hits the ball the way he feels it is right, but he can say it, most cannot.
David Leadbetter is to golf what Nick Bolleiteri is to tennis. Recently, it was announced that David would be heading to India for a training session at the Jack Niclaus signature Classic Golf resort in Gurgaon, the outsourcing hub adjoining Delhi, and described by those who have not been to Singapore as the Singapore of India, as Gurgaon still has a way to go.
Considering that Nick Price, Nick Faldo, Ernie Els queue up for a sermon from David, the Indian golfing fraternity tumbled over their tees. Someone remarked that the Classic Golf Resort where David was supposed to descend would have to be auctioned to afford his fees.
Predictably, the announcement was corrected to lessons in fine-tuning by a senior instructor at David's academy. This was big news but digestible.
Corporate bigwigs, media moguls and glamour dolls trooped in, despite the humidity and the rains, as golf is in, in India and invites a good media splash.
There is a change of scale in the equipment the big and beautiful brandish; it is designer golf wear, whilst the latest gizmos become the norm -- video sessions and sound recordings scrutinized by computers fitted with multimedia and soundcards, golf carts, ball-picking machines, remote controlled sprinklers.
No wonder, golf is big business first and sport later. The instructor, whose sermon was the sound of God, said that the problem with Indians is that they play their golf like cricket. A cover drive makes the perfect fade out of the fairway.
Former cricketers Ajay Jadeja and Kapil Dev arrived furnishing good golfing news.
Doctor Pronnoy Roy, India’s media mogul was there too. Hangers-on whispered that he can fire a cool six or seven over, but in keeping with his dictum of reserving the best for the last that applies well to golf too, it is a handicap of 14 that he advertises to the opposite pair.
And unlike Kapil who relies on his cricketing muscle memory to drive the ball into eternity, Pronnoy has his own little secret, ``I hit the hardest and cleanest when I think that the ball is a politician,'' he said. Simar Duggal, described in the press release as the only lady-model golfer in India, invited attention.
Golf makes its exponent think like no other game while modeling could dull an exponent like no other profession. A thinking model comes almost as a relief. And many exponents did not mind hovering around her handling her flurry of pretty and intelligent questions as well as setting her wrists right.
But the rich and famous are in one league. Golf is happening everywhere. Moving onto more regular sights that one would not have encountered a few years ago --- the time is 7:30 pm, the floodlights are on and the golf range at Siri Fort, located at the up market south Delhi, resonates with the sound of crashing club heads, many against the ball, others due to large divots.
The pace is feverish as scores of Delhiites, wrists cocked, knees bent, heads straight, tees firmly in place, are lined up in the quest for the ever-elusive perfect golf swing. A casual inspection would make them seem like just any other gathering while a closer categorization reveals more:
Career Golfers: They are the hardest hit by the images beamed into our drawing rooms by satellite TV. The icons are Tiger Woods, Ernie Els, Jeev Milkha Singh, Jyoti Randhawa. Suraj, a picture of intense concentration is practicing hard as he desperately wants to make the cut for the Indian tournaments.
``In India, team sports have always been on the forefront, whether it is cricket, hockey, kabaddi, kho kho,'' he says, ``we have never done well in individual sport. In golf when I win, I get all the credit. Nothing is shared.'' This is true-blue individualism in a country that started out being Socialist at the time of independence in 1947.
Not too far away from Suraj, is Zia-ul-Haq, a government officer who presides over the training of his young son, Saif. He narrates the strong influence that parents have had on the careers of the top stars of today, from the William sisters in tennis to Sachin Tendulkar in cricket. Zia, though, is cross with his ward.
``He was disqualified in the first round of an amateur tournament at Delhi golf club, recently,'' says Zia, ``I am very disappointed. If this is the way things are going to turn out, I am sorry to say, Saif's future is bleak.'' This writer is disallowed to speak to the aspiring golfer as his father felt that media exposure at this stage would not be good for Saif's career.
Business golfers: They cart the most expensive golf sets, rattle off quotes from Ian Woosnam's video series and can explain the most intricate nuances of the game. Yet, if they had it their way they would not mind kicking the ball to beat the course. For them it is striking the right banter, not a birdie that is at stake.
``I have paired up with the Army chief, union ministers, police commissioners, cabinet secretaries, cricketers,'' said N K Vohra, a businessman, who had driven all the way from his farmhouse a good 30 kilometers away. It was obvious that Vohra's game belied his theoretical knowledge, but courtesy economic progress, this category has burgeoned learning all the tricks golf can offer.
S Singh, who works for Slumberger was there with his wife and young daughter, sweating profusely with a contingent of coaches around him. Mr Singh struggled to rectify a basic hurrying flaw that had crept into his swing. ``He is keen to pick up the game as fast as possible,'' says his wife, ``his new German MD is an avid golfer.''
Tortured golfers: They have been at the game for eons and are called the brooders and strugglers. Many of them can be seen with scowls on their tired faces and it is anybody's guess that they have had a bad day at the green. Of course, golf is like a game of snakes and ladders and it is equally likely that one would see them up and about the next time round.
Ajay Mehra, an Indian Police Service officer, seemed to have got everything right. Spikes, golf hat, deep blue Greg Norman T-shirt, well-balanced stance. Yet, his misdirected divots dug a veritable crater around his playing area. ``I have been playing the game for 20 years,'' says Mehra, ``and I have learnt to enjoy it within my limitations. There are days when one just keeps on hitting clean. The satisfaction is immense.''
True golfers: They scurry about the range, picking golf balls hit in all directions, hidden behind umbrellas as shields. There is an army of them at Siri Fort.
In the evenings one does not get to see their faces but it is in the heat of the afternoon sun that they brandish their irons to catapult the ball beyond any of the Big Berthas that converge during the regular timings. For them, golf is bread and butter, their life.
There are certainly a few Feroz Ali's and Ali Sher's lurking among them, former caddies who have gone on to greater golfing glory.
Which brings me to the last category to make the account complete. I am left with myself, the struggling-golfer-journalist. I do not think there were any around, poking their noses into everybody’s life rather than letting them be and focusing on their golf.
Double Trouble
Legion of fans follow the progress of sentimental favorite Andre Agassi even as the new order comprising Roger Federer, Leyton Hewitt, Marat Safin are now set to rule the world of tennis, which is becoming even more apparent at the ongoing Australian Open .
There has been the resounding arrival of the beautiful Russian tennis champions Maria Sharapova, Svetlana Kuznetsova, Anastasia Myskina, Elena Dementieva taking the wind out of the William sisters (though Serena has bounced back by beating Sharapova), Justin-Henin, Lindsay Davenport, Jennifer Capriati and dipping brand Anna Kournikova who has virtually disappeared as the pin-up girl of women’s tennis. Looks can only carry you so far.
While tennis aficionados follow Federer’s clinical displays and Sharapova’s feline beauty, here in India all patriotic zeal has been centered around the just arrived new tennis sensation Sania Mirza.
She hasn’t done much by global standards but has become the first Indian woman to make it to the third round of a Grand Slam event (at the current Australian Open) and made Serena break sweat in the second set. In a nation starved of sporting achievement, except in cricket, the 18-year old good looking Sania is the new national pin-up girl.
There are reports that she is being signed up for sponsorship deals that will place her higher than some of the lords of Indian endorsements, the cricketers.
As far as tennis is concerned, the glorification of Sania is due to the fact that Indians have been, sadly, only doing well in doubles and mixed doubles and are world champions at it, for quite sometime now.
In keeping with the spirit of supporting fellow sportsmen, many Indians have been following a few of the doubles matches over the past year including the Indian advance at the Olympics in Greece where India came close to winning bronze.
The lone silver medalist at the games in shooting, Rajyavardhan Rathore is a national icon. In tennis, most have wished somebody to take on the mantle of the real thing --- singles to arouse complete patriotism.
The impression is that doubles comprises out-of-work singles players still looking for earnings through tennis or people who play for pleasure rather than competition, in which case anybody can watch anybody else. One hears the Woodies were good but this writer never saw them play; Indian Anand Amritraj formed a formidable partner with brother Vijay, but Anand barely existed while it was the exploits of Ramesh Krishnan and Vijay that were followed.
In singles, of course, any follower of the game can recall the John McEnroe-Ivan Lendl clashes, Jimmy Connors fighting spirit, Boris Becker-Stephan Edberg volleys, Pete Sampras-Agassi scintillating returns and the existent Agassi-Safin-Federer battle of the ages.
Some champions like McEnroe in the past and the William (Serena, Venus) sisters now are also diligent doubles players, but one has never got around to watching them play, as doubles is always the sideshow of the main event.
The current lot of Indian doubles heroes have been around for a while --- the scions of Indian tennis --- Leander Paes partnering the legend Martina Navratilova, Mahesh Bhupati the world number one doubles player at one time.
Over the past year Sania Mirza too rose to be the best junior doubles player, although she does not figure in the line-up this year as she tries her hand in individual events.
The question is, after the one-year forced experience of watching doubles tennis involving mostly Paes-Bhupati, does or can one enjoy watching tennis doubles on TV? Well, if it weren’t for India playing, it would probably be difficult.
There don’t seem to be too many people who watch tennis doubles matches on television, though playing it can be much more fun. A glimpse of on-going doubles matches does happen prior to the start of the singles event or if there is re-scheduling due to rain and one switches on the TV expecting a singles match, while a doubles is on. The channel is normally changed after information of the latest timings for singles.
While most doubles matches do not have an audience, a few people do appear in the galleries who are either linesmen/ball boys or girls resting before embarking on their duties again or members of the media belonging to the same nation as the players. After all Paes is big news here.
If there are any more people they look like relatives, as they resemble the players in the court. In few of the Paes matches in the recent past, during a peak run of Indian doubles tennis with Bhupati when the duo won several Grand Slams, the pretty actress Mahima Chowdhury who was seeing Paes made an appearance that made doubles watching colorful which was caught by print glossies, but this is about all.
The game itself is difficult to follow, as the action is too fast, like squash or table tennis where the only people enjoying are the ones playing. It is a bit tricky trying to follow the ball as the two players on either side who stand close to the net can butt in any time.
The person at the baseline can prepare for a shot, but the ball never arrives as the partner close to the net butts in the racket.
So just as one zeroes into one player, the other hits the ball that muddles eye-movement of the viewer watching on television that can be disconcerting. To use another analogy, it is like fencing, in which action progresses very fast and all-of-sudden one player takes off the mask, smiling and laughing at a win.
It is difficult to figure out how and why the victory happened. There is also the feeling that that the court is too small for two big muscular players, as most tennis players including women are, to be on one side of the court.
The minimum that someone like Leander or Mahesh should do is to cover the full court. Why have those toned muscles otherwise? Anybody could manage doubles without the flat-abs.
It is even more complex in mixed doubles as both the sides, including the ladies, decide to attack the other lady, unless Serena plays, which results in the guy butting in even when he is not required to.
The only way to follow doubles tennis is in slow motion, which means one can switch to another channel while the actual game is on and come back to catch it later. In unhurried speed it looks quite interesting with considerable skill, reflexes and combining well like fencing. Of course, one can watch the replays as well as real play that feature Agassi, Federer, Safin even Mark Philippousis.
One does not want to take away any of the laurels that Indian doubles players are bringing the country, as it is good that we are doing well at the international level in some sport apart from cricket, but it would be better if it were singles.
But, as they say, beggars cannot be choosers even in sports where we won just one silver medal at the Olympics.
Now the hope is for Sania to deliver many a game set and match, lest she gets carried away by the hype. The two people she needs to be most wary about are the media and the endorsers.
Cricket is India’s most passionate sport. The new shortened and fast-paced avatar T20 is a huge success, competing with staple entertainment avenues, Hindi movies and television soaps.
Some have called T20 the Americanization of cricket, packaged and delivered in a high-action, high-impact capsule, like basketball or boxing.
Fans have loved it so that observers now say that T20 cricket with 3-hours play time (the length of an average Bollywood movie) could eventually end up replacing the full one-day format.
The longest five-day test match version should, however, survive, given the millions of purist followers of the ``gentleman’s game’’ originally played by aristocratic Englishmen.
This Sunday the Indian Premier League (IPL) series (the first big-ticket club cricket tournament in India) ended after weeks of non-stop league action that brought the country to a virtual standstill every evening when the matches were played and telecast live. An estimated 25-million watched the finals.
Though cricket is played and followed in Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, West Indies, England, it is the zealous Indian fans and consequent multinational sponsorships given the huge reach that has sustained the economics of the game worldwide.
Indian cricketers from diverse backgrounds, also reflect the premium on performance and merit. Indian captain M S Dhoni grew up in small town Ranchi (in eastern state Jharkhand), while another hero Iran Pathan studied at a madrassa (traditional Muslim school) in Gujarat.
Cricket is also about the only sport that India has managed to perform consistently at the highest levels. There was a time when India ruled hockey but the standards have fallen to levels that the team has not even qualified for the Beijing Olympics.
Thus the expectations of millions of cricket fans borders on the frenzied with cricketers routinely idolized as demigods or pilloried after every tournament, match and shot depending on the result. Everybody wants India to win every time which is not possible in sports.
The IPL follows the immensely successful T20 world cup last year in South Africa that India won and set the stage for another big event. Thus, the run up to IPL witnessed franchised team owners spending millions of dollars in auctions to procure the world’s best players.
The money doled out has raised similar questions, especially with soccer players, elsewhere in the world: will cricketers be more loyal to the club rather than donning national colors, which may be a less lucrative option.
Dhoni, for example, was bought at US$1.5 million, a handsome sum for a short duration tournament like IPL.
Each franchisee, in turn, is allotted rights in gate earnings, sponsors and from television.
Existing investors include big corporate names such as Mukesh Ambani (promoter Reliance Group) and Vijay Mallya (owner UB Group), Bollywood mega stars Shah Rukh Khan and Preity Zinta and corporations such as Deccan Chronicle, India Cements and construction company GMR.
The IPL is estimated to be worth US$4 billion with team-owners needing to fork out about US$125 million every-year to the Board of Cricket Control in India (BCCI), to retain their rights.
It is predicted that over the next few years T20 will earn cricket’s governing body, the International Cricket Council, US$1.5 billion from television rights alone.
Essentially, the change has come about in keeping with dwindling spectator attention span given fast paced lifestyles combined with the need for that quick adrenalin rush that only sports can provide.
The new game also seems best practiced by the young, who have imbibed fearlessness with gusto as there is simply no time to think in the short game. There is only one option with the bat --- to hit.
To add to the fun, the wham-bang cricket matches are peppered by American-style razzmatazz; there is much dance and music by big names and Bollywood stars (such as Salman Khan at the grand finale in Mumbai).
Professional cheerleaders in skimpy dresses imported from Europe and Australia, created some controversy with the local overzealous cultural hawks keen to ``protect’’ Indian ethos by threatening violence and disrupting matches.
There are fireworks and other pyrotechnics and the message has resounded clear as the many clean hits to the stands: that T20 is a massive hit with the audiences.
Indeed, snappy cricket was born at last year’s first world cup for the genre.
Even as the tournament progressed and India emerged champions, back home traffic dwindled with reports of innumerable appointments cancelled and even the usually efficient and hard working private sector took a pause, to toast the team.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh took time off to watch the final, closely contested between traditional rivals India and Pakistan that was eventually won off the last ball. The Indian team was given a rousing welcome back in Mumbai.
India played without the big three aging stars, considered cricketing gods, Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and Saurav Ganguly. The team with an average age of 24 years was among the youngest.
Yuvraj Singh emerged as the new youth icon smashing six sixes (ball hit in the air out of the boundary line) in an over against England in a do-or-die match, the maximum possible in an over, and that too against a frontline pace bowler.
Such a feat has been achieved only once in international cricket, against a slow bowler from a team on the fringes of commercial cricket. Each T20 game averaged 8-10 sixes compared to much less in the one-day format.
The IPL too has thrown up a set of young heroes, both Indian and international --- Shaun Marsh, Yousuf Pathan, Swapnil Asnodkar, Shane Watson, Sohail Tanvir, to name some.
Latest TV ratings indicate that women, the usual watchers of TV soaps, have also taken well to T20 cricket and also turned up in good numbers at the stadiums.
Unlike men in India, women are not avid watchers of cricket. Somehow, it doesn’t appeal to them. That has changed with T20.
The uncertainty, with fortunes changing by the ball and the non-stop action matches any reality TV show or soaps with sub-plots and twists by the minute.
Indeed, those feeling the pinch of IPL most are cinema theatres and the hugely popular TV soaps. It is expensive to watch a movie at a multiplex while cricket can be beamed for almost free.
A big banner Bollywood film “Tashan” starring top names Akshay Kumar (ironically, a brand ambassador for IPL team Delhi Daredevils), Saif Ali and Kareena Kapoor has hit the box-office dust.
``The evening shows (with highest audience) have been affected due to the matches,’’ a spokesman of a leading movie theatre has said.
Another movie that has suffered is Bhootnath, aimed at school kids on summer holiday, starring famous actor Amitabh Bachchan.
Mega star Shah Rukh Khan's (again ironically, IPL team owner of Kolkata Knight Riders) new TV-game show has also not been able to garner attention either. Cricket has been blamed again.
The game has changed forever.
India world champions of snazzy cricket (September 2007)
It is fast, furious and intense and fits into the country’s new credo of high energy, instant gratification, money and success, especially applicable to the young generation, most targeted by marketers in India.
The Indian sub-continent’s most passionate sport, cricket, has emerged in a fresh avatar fitted into a shorter time frame, accompanied by American style flamboyance and razzmatazz such as dancing cheer leaders, fireworks, fast music and more.
Twenty-Twenty cricket is the quick paced shortened and energized version as opposed to the original slam-bang daylong 50-overs-a-side or the 5-day test matches.
The team’s now have to slug it out like boxers or gladiators, going for the big hits, combining technique with raw power, the slog and dollops of luck, all packed into three hours of rapid action.
The uncertainty, with fortunes changing by the ball literally, and non-stop entertainment keeps the audience on the feet through the duration.
Essentially, the change has come about in keeping with dwindling spectator attention span given fast paced lives combined with the need for that adrenalin rush from sport.
Cricket, too had to change.
Indeed, over the last couple of weeks the first world championship and also the first tournament of the kind featuring top teams, in the new format has proved the skeptics wrong.
It has been a resounding success.
The icing has been an India-Pakistan grand finale played this Monday in South Africa that India won after a closely contested match that could have gone either way.
But the winner, was also the game of cricket, re-invented and served spiced up to sell-out crowds and TV audiences around the globe.
The matches were choc-a-bloc, TV ratings zoomed and given the eyeballs, advertisers have gone home happy despite paying broadcasters up to US $25,000 for a 10 second slot.
It is estimated that over the next eight years Twenty20-cricket will earn cricket’s governing body, the International Cricket Council, $1.5 billion from television rights alone.
In India, cricket ratings knocked off established soaps, musical contests and reality shows that have dominated, especially after the early exit of the Indian team from the world championship of the traditional slower form in the recent past.
The illegal satta (gambling) market has also been reporting brisk business.
An earlier India-Pakistan league match witnessed frenzied betting to the tune of a reported Rs 5 billion just in regions around commercial capital Mumbai.
Almost all 20-20 matches were fiercely fought with the result apparent at the end only.
Australia considered almost invincible into the tournament was humbled by the lowly rated Zimbabwe in an earlier round. The result was akin to Brazil or Germany beaten by USA in soccer.
India was almost knocked out and had the only option of winning by big margins to stay afloat. They managed it quite well.
Even as the tournament progressed and India emerged champions of snappy cricket, back home traffic dwindled with reports of appointments cancelled all over and the usually efficient and hard working private sector took a pause, to toast the team.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh too took time off to watch the final.
The new game seems best practiced by the young and fearless. India was without the big three aging stars, considered the cricketing gods of India, Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and Saurav Ganguly. The Indian team with an average age of 24 years was among the youngest.
Yuvraj Singh emerged as the new icon smashing six sixes in an over against England in a do-or-die match, the maximum possible in an over, and that too against a frontline pace bowler.
Such a feat has been achieved only once at the international level in the entire history of the game, and that too against a slow bowler from a team on the fringes of commercial cricket.
Yuvraj also scored the fastest 50 runs off 12 balls compared to the international record of 20 balls in the thousands of matches played till now.
The intensity of the new game will ensure that Yuvraj’s feat, considered near impossible till very recently, will be replicated and possibly improved in the future, given the number of sixes that have rained in the tournament.
Each game averaged 8-10 sixes compared to 3-4 in the most exciting one-day tournament.
Fans have loved it so that observers now say that 20-20 cricket would end up replacing the one day format, though the longest test matches should survive, given the millions of purist followers of the game.
Though cricket is played and followed in Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, West Indies, England, it is the zealous Indian following and consequent multinational sponsorships given the big market and reach that has sustained the economics of the game.
Cricket is about the only sport that India has managed to perform consistently at the world stage.
Thus the expectations of fans, across social, caste and religions, borders on the frenzied with cricketers routinely raised to the level of demigods or pilloried after almost every match, depending on the result.
Cricketers and film stars are by far the most adored celebrities in India, minting millions as brand ambassadors of sundry products
Cricketers from diverse backgrounds, also reflect the myriad and often complex structures. Captain M S Dhoni grew up in small town Ranchi, while another hero Iran Pathan studied at a madrassa.
Indeed before 20-20-cricket, Bollywood, India’s huge film industry has been quick to catch the pulse of the new generation. A recent global survey voted Indian youth as the happiest given the high expectations, jobs, income and changing lifestyles.
Bollywood has churned out four super hits in the recent past, Lagaan, Rang de Basanti, Lage Raho Munnabhai and the latest Chak de India.
Each has showcased a never dying attitude, victory for the underdog and fighting against the odds. Lagaan was cleverly woven around a cricket match during India’s colonial past, with a team of peasants taking on the oppressors, the British rulers.
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In the latest big hit Chak de India, super star Shahrukh Khan turns a band of rag-tag girls into a world-beating hockey team.
The girls end up beating the Australians in the world cup finals. Importantly, there is no Pakistan to drum up the obvious national fervor. The emphasis is on hard work, tactics and strategy to beat professional teams.
Shahrukh, incidentally, was present at the 20-20 final in Johannesburg, to cheer the Indian team.
Cricket and Bollywood often feed on each other, providing film directors, sponsors and advertisers a potent cocktail of themes or brand images woven around the two genres or stars
It was, thus fitting, that India won. But, tomorrow is another day and Indian cricketers know all too well that the fans are only going to expect more.
There is a dire need to promote other sports to levels of excellence in India so that new heroes emerge.
For now, though, India is very happy with its cricketers.
Cricket over Politics
The past month has been a bit of a unique mix for this country. Two subjects, cricket and politics that grip the nation most passionately have been at the forefront of public minds.
The Indian cricket team is on a historic trip to Pakistan, with the two neighbors playing each other in either country for the first time in 15 years, a period that has witnessed the Kargil conflict and near-war like situations with troops amassed along the border.
The month of April-May will witness the nation electing a new government at the Center, with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress, the two main parties vying for votes.
And as was expected when it comes to a choice between cricket and politics, the country is universal in its preference --- it is cricket. To start with, many politicians, including stalwarts such as Andhra Pradesh chief minister Chandrababu Naidu expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that cricket was being made to overlap with the run-up to the elections.
The complaint was that people would simply not vote if a match were to be played on voting days, which will be in phases over two months. The other problem was that it would be difficult to draw crowds at election rallies during match days that extended to five one-day internationals and three test matches (a total of 20 days of actual play apart from the pre and post-match hype).
The overlap did not happen as the Election Commission played it safe by ensuring that the voting days fall after the series is over.
The other predicament is very much on and making matters worse politically is that the series is turning out to be a closely fought one. Facing the brunt of cricket is Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani who is on a country wide Rath Yatra (caravan) across the country proclaiming the BJP message.
People simply do not turn up to listen to Advani when a match is on. Advani has resorted to fitting wide television screens either side of his caravan bus, telecasting the matches live to draw the crowds. He peppers his speech with the latest score in order to keep the crowds updated and humored.
Advani’s is not the only dilemma. News reports from across the country tell the same story --- sparse crowds at election rallies whether India is batting or fielding. Such is the interest that even film stars, the one perennial weapon used in politics to draw the crowds have failed.
Major political parties have assigned staff to monitor the match days so that no big announcements such as release of manifesto or a press conference by any leader of standing happens if India is doing well.
This is to prevent being relegated to inside pages of newspapers or the post-commercial slots in television news, as cricket takes the front slots. Regular party briefings are postponed during match days to prevent journalists being inconvenienced.
Election speeches with cricket lingo are the order of the day for maximum response from the crowds. In a recent speech Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said that the number three is lucky for the country as well as him.
This is the third time that he would be Prime Minister if the BJP won, the Indo-Pak peace process was a result of his third attempt after Lahore and Agra and Virendra Sehwag has become the first Indian ever to score a triple century during the ongoing series. Sehwag drew the biggest cheers.
Others have also joined the cricket bandwagon. Chief Minister of Gujarat Narendra Modi sought to make amends to his personal attack on Congress President Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul by saying that in such a big electoral match-up no balls and wide-balls are bound to be delivered.
There is a perpetual race to send congratulatory messages across the border each time India performs well.
Vajpayee, Sonia Gandhi as well as sundry other politicians wire instant missives to individual players as well as the team for every victory or milestone. The Indian team that has been performing quite well over the past couple of years has perhaps never received so many posts for one series.
The BJP and the Congress have also been at pains to put each other down on where the credit for cricket should lie.
Each time India wins, the BJP makes it a point to club ``India winning’’ with its election campaign of ``India Shining’’ while at the same time reiterating that the matches are being played due to the initiative of Vajpayee, in the first place.
The Congress, on the other hand, uses every sophistry to convey that the achievements of the cricketers should be seen as such and not as a victory of the BJP, which the party is trying to portray.
It is true that cricket is the one opium that unites the country like none else. While politics is about vote-banks whether based on caste, creed, religion or the rich and poor, cricket cuts across all social barriers.
Top corporate offices as well as roadside vendors witness people in well-heeled suits and ragged clothes glued onto televisions sets. One of the best performers during the one-day series was Mohammed Kaif, a Muslim who has the whole-hearted support and wishes of every Hindu in this country.
Sehwag, the toast of Indian cricket, belongs to a lower middle-class family, driving a scooter to work, until he made it big. Other stars such as Rahul Dravid and V V S Laxman belong to middle-class erudite families of professionals.
The captain Saurav Ganguly comes from a well-settled business family. Indian icon Sachin Tendulkar grew up playing local cricket in the maidans (playing fields) of Mumbai.
All the big names from diverse backgrounds above are linked by one parameter --- performance, a microcosm for the entire nation striving for the ideal of unity in diversity.
It is no wonder that when the Indian team performs well one billion people celebrate. It is also apparent why the people of India prefer cricket to politics --- no sectarianism, no religious fanaticism, no pseudo-secularism. Cricket is all about hitting a six or taking a good catch. It cannot get simpler and straighter.
The cricketers themselves have been under pressure to balance the needs of diplomacy that demands best behavior with the cutthroat competition of international cricket where sledging and frayed on-field tempers are the order of the day.
Before embarking on the tour, Vajpayee personally told the players that their aim should also be to win hearts.
The cricket matches so far have been mostly free of any fracas and played with a fair amount of spirit. Indian fans who have traveled in the thousands have been treated to warm hospitality by the hosts.
As far as people are concerned it is clear that the peace process enjoys full support. And, it is the performers who are always revered first.
Will baseball catch on in India (September 2003)
Things American are already a rage here, the latest being `Charlie's Angels'. But, the current debate is about baseball and the reluctance of Indians to imbibe the sport.
Two baseball experts flew into India recently to teach Indians baseball know-how and, predictably, invited considerable attention. Their effort is part of India's amateur baseball federation's move to boost the game in the country, and add further drops to the ocean of America that exists here.
Symbols of American life that pervade India include kids grown up on MTV lingo, `Friends' and HBO, sounding more American than Americans. Pepsi and Coke, Pizza Hut and Macdonald's, CNN and Fox, Kentucky Fried Chicken and IBM, have set up shop and are a part of every day life and culture and also the subject of public ire each time there is a ventilation of anti-American sentiments.
News follows Christian Amanpour as much as Britney Spears or Jennifer Aniston. `Bruce Almighty' registered a good opening while Julia Roberts is the Pretty Woman and India's Sweetheart as well. A mass of Indians employed as call center executives masquerade as Americans (Reena becomes Ron) on phone, catering to a Citibank account holders' inquiries from Oklahoma.
Indians also know that George Bush's (mis) pronunciations on TV affect their lives as much as Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee -- an attack on Iraq that can wreck stock market fortunes here or a meet with President Musharraf of Pakistan at Camp David that is a matter of life and death in Kashmir. Jay Leno jokes abound.
But, it is in sports that American influence has been rather limited. Indians don't understand American football and don't play baseball. Basketball is practiced by a few, while boxing news is limited to Evander Holyfield in the ring and Mike Tyson off it.
If there is one game that has taken recent root in the country, it is golf, proven by the proliferation of golf courses in the last few years. But, this has been more of a corporate effort than a people response, which means golf is fast turning into a popular game of the rich.
Further, golf is as European as American. Similarly, there is an increasing stock of people interested in Formula-1 racing and bowling.
But baseball is as true as American can be. Thus, when two American baseball coaches arrived here, the talk centered around why do Indians who have taken to every American facet, including accent, like fish to water, resist baseball?
The answer lies in a continental divide. What baseball is to America, soccer is to Europe, cricket is to the Indian sub-continent consisting of Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and India.
If Europe cannot look beyond David Beckham, whom Americans ignored on his recent trip to promote football in the US, Indians cannot see beyond Sachin Tendulkar, the cricketing God of India.
This writer is not aware of a single baseball player. Only that Michael Jordan is, or till recently was, the God of America and Reebok -- or was it Nike. If Sachin steps out of his house in India, David in England, Michael in America, it is news as flashy as it can get.
When golf made its hesitant beginnings in India, a prominent coach from the famous David Leadbetter academy said, “Indians will never learn how to play golf as they can play no game unlike cricket. So, a slice is a cover drive to the right and a hook is an on-drive to the left.''
The coach was wrong -- Indians took to golf and there is a legion of Indian golfers now, making more money than most cricketers, which was just a dream a while ago.
But, will the golf case mean baseball can succeed as well? To reverse the question, could cricket translate into an American success, like Indian curry and `Bend it Like Beckham'? What are the chances of Sachin Tendulkar turning God in America? He is an icon in England, South Africa and Australia, where Donald Bradman is on the pedestal.
Essentially, cricket and baseball look similar on TV. There is a guy who chucks the ball, another who wields the bat, catchers all around and, to make a run, you need to run.
If the two are just different garbs, and sports as we know can bring people together, as was attempted by the recent US-Iraq football match, baseball and cricket should build further bridges between India and US.
It will not be so easy. Indeed, to make any beginning, one has to further ask whether Americans would like to watch Sachin on Oprah, or would Oprah feature Sachin.
This writer wouldn't watch an unnamed baseball star on a TV chat show here -- Sachin on ESPN/Star Sports any day. It is the icons that create a particular sporting spirit -- Germany took to tennis after Boris Becker, Beligum, after Justin Henin, and the world has taken to golf after Tiger Woods.
Sports can be an intense personal choice -- hamburgers from Macdonald's may not be changing filiations, but here it is a matter of changing Gods -- from Sachin to Michael or vice versa. It can be an impossible decision or a matter of time. Unless Anna Kournikova chooses to play both, which has nothing to do with God or tennis.
Birdie for all
A few years back New Delhi, the capital of India, boasted of just one 18-hole golf course. There are over a dozen now. Several Indian golfers are making it big in the international circuit and many starry-eyed parents now perceive golfing as a viable career choice for their wards, given the millions in prize money.
There have been many more changes --- a few years back there were no multiplexes, malls, bowling alleys --- they dot the urban landscape now, providing wholesome entertainment, combining food, drink, movies and a bit of exercise. But, this one is about golf.
While the Indian population still remains largely cricket-crazed, golf is generating cultural frissons, giving rise to sporting stereotypes as well as the experience of a global sport that has caught on here.
As a lesser golfer, struggling with the game, one pores over tomes of literature, hopes to hire the best of instructors even if they are unaffordable, spend time and money, yet the muffed shots count the same.
The struggle becomes an obsession even as the mind tries to fathom more complex techniques, the grip and stance, numerous anatomical parts are mentally diagnosed, length and thickness of fingers are analyzed, psychiatric and mental exercises are prescribed.
Feroz Ali, India's leading golfer, recently said that he hits the ball the way he feels it is right, but he can say it, most cannot.
David Leadbetter is to golf what Nick Bolleiteri is to tennis. Recently, it was announced that David would be heading to India for a training session at the Jack Niclaus signature Classic Golf resort in Gurgaon, the outsourcing hub adjoining Delhi, and described by those who have not been to Singapore as the Singapore of India, as Gurgaon still has a way to go.
Considering that Nick Price, Nick Faldo, Ernie Els queue up for a sermon from David, the Indian golfing fraternity tumbled over their tees. Someone remarked that the Classic Golf Resort where David was supposed to descend would have to be auctioned to afford his fees.
Predictably, the announcement was corrected to lessons in fine-tuning by a senior instructor at David's academy. This was big news but digestible.
Corporate bigwigs, media moguls and glamour dolls trooped in, despite the humidity and the rains, as golf is in, in India and invites a good media splash.
There is a change of scale in the equipment the big and beautiful brandish; it is designer golf wear, whilst the latest gizmos become the norm -- video sessions and sound recordings scrutinized by computers fitted with multimedia and soundcards, golf carts, ball-picking machines, remote controlled sprinklers.
No wonder, golf is big business first and sport later. The instructor, whose sermon was the sound of God, said that the problem with Indians is that they play their golf like cricket. A cover drive makes the perfect fade out of the fairway.
Former cricketers Ajay Jadeja and Kapil Dev arrived furnishing good golfing news.
Doctor Pronnoy Roy, India’s media mogul was there too. Hangers-on whispered that he can fire a cool six or seven over, but in keeping with his dictum of reserving the best for the last that applies well to golf too, it is a handicap of 14 that he advertises to the opposite pair.
And unlike Kapil who relies on his cricketing muscle memory to drive the ball into eternity, Pronnoy has his own little secret, ``I hit the hardest and cleanest when I think that the ball is a politician,'' he said. Simar Duggal, described in the press release as the only lady-model golfer in India, invited attention.
Golf makes its exponent think like no other game while modeling could dull an exponent like no other profession. A thinking model comes almost as a relief. And many exponents did not mind hovering around her handling her flurry of pretty and intelligent questions as well as setting her wrists right.
But the rich and famous are in one league. Golf is happening everywhere. Moving onto more regular sights that one would not have encountered a few years ago --- the time is 7:30 pm, the floodlights are on and the golf range at Siri Fort, located at the up market south Delhi, resonates with the sound of crashing club heads, many against the ball, others due to large divots.
The pace is feverish as scores of Delhiites, wrists cocked, knees bent, heads straight, tees firmly in place, are lined up in the quest for the ever-elusive perfect golf swing. A casual inspection would make them seem like just any other gathering while a closer categorization reveals more:
Career Golfers: They are the hardest hit by the images beamed into our drawing rooms by satellite TV. The icons are Tiger Woods, Ernie Els, Jeev Milkha Singh, Jyoti Randhawa. Suraj, a picture of intense concentration is practicing hard as he desperately wants to make the cut for the Indian tournaments.
``In India, team sports have always been on the forefront, whether it is cricket, hockey, kabaddi, kho kho,'' he says, ``we have never done well in individual sport. In golf when I win, I get all the credit. Nothing is shared.'' This is true-blue individualism in a country that started out being Socialist at the time of independence in 1947.
Not too far away from Suraj, is Zia-ul-Haq, a government officer who presides over the training of his young son, Saif. He narrates the strong influence that parents have had on the careers of the top stars of today, from the William sisters in tennis to Sachin Tendulkar in cricket. Zia, though, is cross with his ward.
``He was disqualified in the first round of an amateur tournament at Delhi golf club, recently,'' says Zia, ``I am very disappointed. If this is the way things are going to turn out, I am sorry to say, Saif's future is bleak.'' This writer is disallowed to speak to the aspiring golfer as his father felt that media exposure at this stage would not be good for Saif's career.
Business golfers: They cart the most expensive golf sets, rattle off quotes from Ian Woosnam's video series and can explain the most intricate nuances of the game. Yet, if they had it their way they would not mind kicking the ball to beat the course. For them it is striking the right banter, not a birdie that is at stake.
``I have paired up with the Army chief, union ministers, police commissioners, cabinet secretaries, cricketers,'' said N K Vohra, a businessman, who had driven all the way from his farmhouse a good 30 kilometers away. It was obvious that Vohra's game belied his theoretical knowledge, but courtesy economic progress, this category has burgeoned learning all the tricks golf can offer.
S Singh, who works for Slumberger was there with his wife and young daughter, sweating profusely with a contingent of coaches around him. Mr Singh struggled to rectify a basic hurrying flaw that had crept into his swing. ``He is keen to pick up the game as fast as possible,'' says his wife, ``his new German MD is an avid golfer.''
Tortured golfers: They have been at the game for eons and are called the brooders and strugglers. Many of them can be seen with scowls on their tired faces and it is anybody's guess that they have had a bad day at the green. Of course, golf is like a game of snakes and ladders and it is equally likely that one would see them up and about the next time round.
Ajay Mehra, an Indian Police Service officer, seemed to have got everything right. Spikes, golf hat, deep blue Greg Norman T-shirt, well-balanced stance. Yet, his misdirected divots dug a veritable crater around his playing area. ``I have been playing the game for 20 years,'' says Mehra, ``and I have learnt to enjoy it within my limitations. There are days when one just keeps on hitting clean. The satisfaction is immense.''
True golfers: They scurry about the range, picking golf balls hit in all directions, hidden behind umbrellas as shields. There is an army of them at Siri Fort.
In the evenings one does not get to see their faces but it is in the heat of the afternoon sun that they brandish their irons to catapult the ball beyond any of the Big Berthas that converge during the regular timings. For them, golf is bread and butter, their life.
There are certainly a few Feroz Ali's and Ali Sher's lurking among them, former caddies who have gone on to greater golfing glory.
Which brings me to the last category to make the account complete. I am left with myself, the struggling-golfer-journalist. I do not think there were any around, poking their noses into everybody’s life rather than letting them be and focusing on their golf.
Double Trouble
Legion of fans follow the progress of sentimental favorite Andre Agassi even as the new order comprising Roger Federer, Leyton Hewitt, Marat Safin are now set to rule the world of tennis, which is becoming even more apparent at the ongoing Australian Open .
There has been the resounding arrival of the beautiful Russian tennis champions Maria Sharapova, Svetlana Kuznetsova, Anastasia Myskina, Elena Dementieva taking the wind out of the William sisters (though Serena has bounced back by beating Sharapova), Justin-Henin, Lindsay Davenport, Jennifer Capriati and dipping brand Anna Kournikova who has virtually disappeared as the pin-up girl of women’s tennis. Looks can only carry you so far.
While tennis aficionados follow Federer’s clinical displays and Sharapova’s feline beauty, here in India all patriotic zeal has been centered around the just arrived new tennis sensation Sania Mirza.
She hasn’t done much by global standards but has become the first Indian woman to make it to the third round of a Grand Slam event (at the current Australian Open) and made Serena break sweat in the second set. In a nation starved of sporting achievement, except in cricket, the 18-year old good looking Sania is the new national pin-up girl.
There are reports that she is being signed up for sponsorship deals that will place her higher than some of the lords of Indian endorsements, the cricketers.
As far as tennis is concerned, the glorification of Sania is due to the fact that Indians have been, sadly, only doing well in doubles and mixed doubles and are world champions at it, for quite sometime now.
In keeping with the spirit of supporting fellow sportsmen, many Indians have been following a few of the doubles matches over the past year including the Indian advance at the Olympics in Greece where India came close to winning bronze.
The lone silver medalist at the games in shooting, Rajyavardhan Rathore is a national icon. In tennis, most have wished somebody to take on the mantle of the real thing --- singles to arouse complete patriotism.
The impression is that doubles comprises out-of-work singles players still looking for earnings through tennis or people who play for pleasure rather than competition, in which case anybody can watch anybody else. One hears the Woodies were good but this writer never saw them play; Indian Anand Amritraj formed a formidable partner with brother Vijay, but Anand barely existed while it was the exploits of Ramesh Krishnan and Vijay that were followed.
In singles, of course, any follower of the game can recall the John McEnroe-Ivan Lendl clashes, Jimmy Connors fighting spirit, Boris Becker-Stephan Edberg volleys, Pete Sampras-Agassi scintillating returns and the existent Agassi-Safin-Federer battle of the ages.
Some champions like McEnroe in the past and the William (Serena, Venus) sisters now are also diligent doubles players, but one has never got around to watching them play, as doubles is always the sideshow of the main event.
The current lot of Indian doubles heroes have been around for a while --- the scions of Indian tennis --- Leander Paes partnering the legend Martina Navratilova, Mahesh Bhupati the world number one doubles player at one time.
Over the past year Sania Mirza too rose to be the best junior doubles player, although she does not figure in the line-up this year as she tries her hand in individual events.
The question is, after the one-year forced experience of watching doubles tennis involving mostly Paes-Bhupati, does or can one enjoy watching tennis doubles on TV? Well, if it weren’t for India playing, it would probably be difficult.
There don’t seem to be too many people who watch tennis doubles matches on television, though playing it can be much more fun. A glimpse of on-going doubles matches does happen prior to the start of the singles event or if there is re-scheduling due to rain and one switches on the TV expecting a singles match, while a doubles is on. The channel is normally changed after information of the latest timings for singles.
While most doubles matches do not have an audience, a few people do appear in the galleries who are either linesmen/ball boys or girls resting before embarking on their duties again or members of the media belonging to the same nation as the players. After all Paes is big news here.
If there are any more people they look like relatives, as they resemble the players in the court. In few of the Paes matches in the recent past, during a peak run of Indian doubles tennis with Bhupati when the duo won several Grand Slams, the pretty actress Mahima Chowdhury who was seeing Paes made an appearance that made doubles watching colorful which was caught by print glossies, but this is about all.
The game itself is difficult to follow, as the action is too fast, like squash or table tennis where the only people enjoying are the ones playing. It is a bit tricky trying to follow the ball as the two players on either side who stand close to the net can butt in any time.
The person at the baseline can prepare for a shot, but the ball never arrives as the partner close to the net butts in the racket.
So just as one zeroes into one player, the other hits the ball that muddles eye-movement of the viewer watching on television that can be disconcerting. To use another analogy, it is like fencing, in which action progresses very fast and all-of-sudden one player takes off the mask, smiling and laughing at a win.
It is difficult to figure out how and why the victory happened. There is also the feeling that that the court is too small for two big muscular players, as most tennis players including women are, to be on one side of the court.
The minimum that someone like Leander or Mahesh should do is to cover the full court. Why have those toned muscles otherwise? Anybody could manage doubles without the flat-abs.
It is even more complex in mixed doubles as both the sides, including the ladies, decide to attack the other lady, unless Serena plays, which results in the guy butting in even when he is not required to.
The only way to follow doubles tennis is in slow motion, which means one can switch to another channel while the actual game is on and come back to catch it later. In unhurried speed it looks quite interesting with considerable skill, reflexes and combining well like fencing. Of course, one can watch the replays as well as real play that feature Agassi, Federer, Safin even Mark Philippousis.
One does not want to take away any of the laurels that Indian doubles players are bringing the country, as it is good that we are doing well at the international level in some sport apart from cricket, but it would be better if it were singles.
But, as they say, beggars cannot be choosers even in sports where we won just one silver medal at the Olympics.
Now the hope is for Sania to deliver many a game set and match, lest she gets carried away by the hype. The two people she needs to be most wary about are the media and the endorsers.
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About Me
- Siddharth Srivastava
- Independent Journalist and Writer. Author of Learning India. Published in New York Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, among others...