india needs more liberal gun laws?

A bizarre full-page spread in today's Hindustan Times actually argues that India's gun laws are too restrictive, and it should be easier to get gun licenses and buy imported weapons. The weirdest part is the way the piece cites the dropoff in license applications over the past few years as though it's the worst imaginable crisis. Oh my God, fewer people are packing heat! How will we protect ourselves from the marauding hordes?! (OK, they do make the argument that all the crooks get their guns from the black market, but we've heard that line before from America's National Rifle Association, which boils it down into a facile maxim: "If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.")

Here's a good example of the tone the HT takes: "Given the obsolete gun laws and the government’s monopoly over the sector, licence-holders say they have no choice but to make do with these outdated, crude-finish weapons." Gasp! They can't get the cutting edge assault rifles and automatic pistols they need! Whatever will they do?

It's not April Fool's Day, is it?

five minute blues song

OK, it took me a little longer than five minutes. But you get the idea. BTW: This is the world's first "open source" blues song, so feel free to contribute verses, set it to music, steal the title, turn it into rockabilly or whatever. The Man did it to black artists for years, after all.

The Hindutva Blues

I woke up one morning,
went into politics.
I gathered up a mob.
They gathered up some sticks.

We hit the streets!
We closed the stores!
“Down with the rich!
Up with the poor!”

We held a vote.
And captured booths.
They told lies.
We told the truth.
There was more of us;
what we said was true.
But they had the loot,
They had thrishuls.

We lost the vote!
My deposit's gone!
My Baby left me
for Advani's son.

I got the Hindutva blues.
I got the Kashmir frustration.
These damn politicians
Need assassination!
I got the Hindutva blues.
I got the Godhra confusion.
This democracy blows.
We need a revolution!

I woke up the next day.
The world upside down.
Amitabh lost his wig,
Sachin lost his crown.

Couldn't beat Bangladesh,
Maybe both should retire.
Now Abhi's got a wife....
But hey, what do I care?

They flail around bats!
and dance around trees!
Mera naam bhi joker.
They got nothin on me.

Why they so rich,
when everybody's poor?
These socialites,
the rabble adores.
They's a billion of us,
And two of them.
I don't like 'em.
Let's do 'em in!

I got the Hindutva blues.
That NDTV sensation!
Turnin' gossip into news,
Ignoring starvation.
I got the Hindutva blues.
I got the Stardust obsession.
I don't wanna know.
About my oppression.

That night it was dark,
They was shedding the load.
Didn't have my Baby,
So I lay down in the road.

I went to sleep!
I dreamt in prose!
Didn't sing no songs,
Didn't fight no foes.

A horse came along,
a brass band besides.
But I didn't wake up.
Though they tried and tried.

The groom had Black Label!
The bharat Cutty Sark!
But all that I could do,
was snore there in the dark.

My Baby stole my heart.
And took my booze.
She run off with another man.
I got nothin left to lose.

I got the Hindutva blues.
I got heart palpitations.
My Baby only knows
How to treat my condition.

I got the Kingfisher blues.
I got the IMFL affliction.
I can't brew my own,
Can't afford my addiction.

(repeat until you pass out drunk or the stoning begins)

attn: foreign press - india's highest leader is called the prime minister

With all the domestic flap over the selection of Pratibha Patil as president, readers of this space may have missed the fact that all the Big Foreign Press (with the exception of Newsweek--hooray) have made much of the "election" of India's first female president.

Why is this notable? India has already had a female prime minister--the highest post in the land, with real political power. And three of the most powerful people in politics today, Sonia Gandhi, Jayalalitha and Mayawati, are women. The presidency, in contrast, is a wholly ceremonial post with little importance--less, even, than the US vice presidency.

To me, this news should get about the same amount of coverage (at least as a "victory for women"--that is, apart from the other political wranglgin) as what America's first woman vice president would receive 20 years after the first female president served two terms and became one of the most important political figures of the century (like Indira Gandhi). In other words: Very little.

the history boys

I finally watched The History Boys last night, and I can't stop thinking about it. Sort of a Tom Stoppard with soul, it was one of those very rare pieces of fiction that is actually able to say something (a lot of things, actually) interesting and intelligent about literature. Far from the faff spouted by Robin Williams in The Dead Poets' Society (which bears a passing resemblance to THB in setting and structure), the stuff that the masters in THB say strikes one as just that *bit* better (because it's funny as well as brilliant) than what your college professors said, if they were as clever as Edward Tayler, Wallace Gray and Edward Said. It's full of poignant moments, too, of course. But the worst one, for me, was when the ringer brought in from Oxford to make sure the boys all get places admits that he never thinks about going "back up," because, he says: "I'm not clever enough. I'm not anything really." God, I feel like that ALL the time. Oh, yes, and THB uses "journalism" in the just the right pejorative sense. They really do need to start making more plays into movies.

who needs decent roads and a working sewer when we can have F1 and the commonwealth games?

The mixed up priorities of Delhi's government (and India's, for that matter) never cease to amaze me. We don't have a decent road -- ok, maybe the drive up to the parliament house or something. Half the city gets polluted water out of the taps (or no water, or no taps). Three-quarters of the buildings are illegal or falling down or both. There's no sewer system deserving the name, so everybody's shit goes straight into the river untreated (and much of it right back into the drinking water, I suppose). The garbage pickup is a joke, so half the streets look like part of some municipal dump and the drains are clogged by refuse every year (the good citizens who throw their rubbish on the ground deserve as much blame as the MCD, by the way). But these problems hardly see even a tiny spark of action--certainly not any results. Nope, instead Delhi goes off and bids for the Commonwealth Games. And WINS! Wins? Did the selection committee SEE the airport progress report? Then, high on that dubious success, the next step is a natural -- go after a Formula One race. The Delhi Grand Prix. It sounds good, doesn't it?

Just for a laugh, go down and check out the sports facilities at Nehru stadium or some of the various "modernities" constructed for the Asian Games a decade or so back. I don't know that they've boosted tourism or improved India's sportsmen or created valuable infrastructure. They look like a bunch of neglected, badly constructed junk to my jaundiced eye. Then, if you want to stop laughing, take a gander at one of Delhi's countless slums or (worse) jhuggi clusters. Maybe you think your tax money would be put to good use just obliterating these people, humanely as possible, of course, and bulldozing their houses so India can build some stadium or glass skyscraper. I don't. But even if I did, I'd at least insist that the stadium or skyscraper in question be designed by a competent architect, built with decent materials, and, what the heck, I'd even like it hooked up to a functioning sewage system. See, rich folks like clean water and stink-free air, too.

Here's something you can do. Don't vote. You're right. All the politicians are the same. But don't just continue with your present apathetic, I-can't-be-bothered lack of participation. This time, don't vote as part of a general boycott. I humbly submit that the first issue should be as follows: Nobody votes until every neighborhood has a functioning sewer and drinking water system. If the politicians don't listen when you DO voice your opinion, maybe they'll start when the capital of India's fabulous democracy sees voter turnout fall below 10 percent.

road rage

This morning's papers are reporting that five young guys beat a dude to death for bumping one of their motorcycles in Delhi's usual traffic. It's not the first time I've read such a story. I recall a couple incidents where a motorist blew somebody away, Charles Bronson style, for such an offense. But this was the first time I actually had to admit some mixed feelings. Along with the horror, outrage and fear -- de rigeur for a whiney, liberal, dimestore-psycholanalyzed git like myself -- I found myself identifying a teensy bit with the bludgeoners. Same goes for the Blueline bus killers. In a very dark, Stalinesque moment deep in my alcohol-soaked synapses, something arced over and I thought: Well, you know, sometimes people DO drive like complete assholes. This is why I have to rehang my heavy bag.

genre fiction

I still get annoyed when critics write that this or that author has "broken through the limitations of the genre" or whatever. It's not that I'm one of these guys who insists detective stories or the space opera or the bodice ripper don't have limitations. It's more that the claims for the boundary breaking always seem to be exaggerated. In every case -- Elmore Leonard to Raymond Chandler to Stanislaw Lem to Iain Banks -- what you have is a very good example of the genre, not a breaking of its conventions or limitations.

But here's a more interesting question: Who are some writers who can do both -- write a best-seller AND write a literary novel. And I'm not talking about the oxymoronic "literary potboiler," by which reviewers mean "literate potboiler/thriller/etc." (Please don't say Graham Greene).

My candidate of the month is Kate Atkinson, who's written at least one decent literary novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, and two cracking detective stories (actually, the best I've read in a long time), in Case Histories and A Good Turn.

two observations about the namesake

(1) Overrated.
(2) To quote the world-renowned Dan Mendelsohn, "Isn't a character named Gogol precious and pretentious at the same time?"

(Saw the flick yesterday).

bheja fry

Our good friend Vinay Pathak is hilarious in the low-budget hit Bheja Fry. Apparently he's looking at a lot of scripts now, but as seems to always be the case in Bollywood, most of them are copycats of his last outing. The brilliant part about Vinay's performance in Bheja Fry is that he brought back the essential note of realism to Hindi-film comedy--unlike his buddy Ranvir, who delivered the usual outsized performance that we've seen in the past with Javed Jaffrey's goof in Salaam Namaste or Boman Irani's roles in Munnabhai and Main Hoon Na. So writers should be looking to feed Vinay scripts like the original Gol Maal, which require terrific comic timing and charisma, but also the ability to portray a real character. Bollywood needs to remember that the audience shouldn't be constantly made painfully aware that it is watching a performance.

Here are my suggestions:

(1) Remake Gol Maal - Why not? Remakes are hot. Vinay is hot. And the guy could play that role with his eyebrows and (fake) mustache alone.

(2) A detective sequel to Bheja Fry - Take the phone gags Bharat Bhushan used to "help" reunite the couple in Bheja Fry to the next level, as his income tax inspector position leads him into a real sleuth mystery a la Inspector Clouseau.

off the wall prediction

OK, Ram Gopal Varma / Subash Ghai / somebody should hire me as their idea man. Seriously. I know I don't know jack about Bollywood, but.... Case in point: I'll lay odds that serial kisser guy Emraan Hashmi is going to be a big star. If Ramu had taken him on instead of that dufus in James, people would be talking about him like the did about Tarantino after he resurrected Travolta. No. I AM serious. Yes. I know he can't act. That's the director's job. Come ON, dude.

brunch at sakura

You gotta try it. OK, it's about $100 for two people, but if you have a hearty appetite, you get your money's worth of sushi, tepanyaki (bata chapal sized prawns!) and beef medallions. Plus there's unlimitied beer or wine, etc. I have to say I regret all those times (ok, a few) that I went to Olive.

old media: build some brick and mortar libraries

The other day I read a piece in the Express about a library in CP that has 700 employees.... I was shocked, SHOCKED to discover that there was a library in CP.

That it had 700 employees seemed a minor matter.

Seriously - Why are there no decent libraries in India? Even the top universities have woefully inadequate collections. Aren't there any philanthropists who want their names on big buildings? Once upon a time I wrote about the powerful Indian diaspora.... Come on guys: Pony up.

In Delhi, at least, there should be one public library that bears some similarity to the New York Public Library--that should be the goal, anyway. If necessary, it could be a multi-university library shared by the students / faculty of DU, JNU, IIT, etc and open to the public for a fee. No doubt most of the big publishing houses would donate their "classics" to get good PR in one of the few countries where the book business is booming. And the guys on the Forbes list of the richest folks in the world might even toss in a few bucks.

Who knows, it could help with all that "knowledge economy" crapola everybody keeps rabbitting on about.

the continuing beer saga

If I have any readers out there, they must be getting tired of me going on and on about beer. But to show that I'm not beholden to any foreign or domestic interests, that I am not "motivated" as is sometimes said in the Indian press, I am going to keep writing about it anyway. My latest findings RE Kingfisher -- Some of the big bottles are loaded with glycerine and some aren't, even though all the bottles that I get say they're made in Ludhiana. If no one explains this mystery I may have to write something about Dr. (of what?) Mallya so I can ask him in person.

which is india's most unpleasant state?

My impressions: Bihar isn't any worse than MP or UP, and a case can be made that Orissa may be nicer than all three (certainly Bhubaneswar is loads nicer than Patna). This leads me to believe that much of the stuff we read about these places is wrong.

Which leads me to my question: Where's the place you'd wish upon your worst enemy? Give me your grim stinkholes, your disgusting deathtraps, your loud, polluted, rude, poverty-stricken, 52 degree Celsius top three. IAS officers welcome.

And, what the heck, give me a couple dream postings, too. Someplace where it's never too humid and you can pick mangoes from your terrace.

leaving seventymm

A few months back we were really excited about seventymm, one of India's several Netflix copycats. Then we tried it out. Over about six months, they've sent us the wrong movie twice, only one of two vcds twice, and once an unwatchable "bonus disk" instead of the actual film. Each time, customer service has been less than helpful--endless forwarding of requests and assurances that we'll be "compensated" for the mistake, and still no sign of any compensation.

To be honest, I'm not the one who gets on the phone with them and goes insane, and I could probably even tolerate getting the wrong movie (or half a movie, or no movie) once in awhile. My gripe is that the movies suck--at least the English ones. Apart from the obvious (Hitchcock, everything involving Michael Caine, etc) it's a selection along the lines of the "classics" they show on AMC / TNT / TMC in the USA. Over and over.

Worse still, I seem to have an uncanny knack for picking out bad films from the 1981 and before period, sometimes for a laugh, admittedly, and those are the ones that wind up getting delivered to the house even though they are numbers 53 and 45 in my "queue." (Is this an Indian queue? It operates back to front?).

Guys. Enough. I want my money back.

rain!

I am dancing nanga sadhu style on my rooftop as I write this! Yes, folks, rain has come to Delhi. Be it pre-monsoon showers or (can it be?) the beginning of the monsoon, it calls for celebration. By the thermo on my window, the temperature has dropped from 40 plus Centrigrade (i.e. 105 degrees F) to 25C/80F! It's downright comfy. As soon as I finish my rain dance, I'm going to turn off all the A/Cs, open up the windows, and breathe some well-deserved fresh air. Too many weeks inhaling my own exhalings! Too long cooped up with the stink of sweat! Too much, in short, of Delhi summer. I won't say it's over. But, as is often said about Bollywood films: "At least it has an intermission!"

more support for atheistfest 2008

Ever since I moved to Chittaranjan Park -- in a choice location atop a vacant lot used for Durga Puja -- I've been hatching a scheme for a massive blowout AtheistFest that would run all night for weeks at a time, keep everybody awake with loud, depraved music and guys shouting TEST, TEST over a bad public address system, and generally disrupt middle class life as we know it. So far, it hasn't gotten past the "yeah and we could serve free beer" stage in terms of actual planning. But in spirit at least I have lots of international support, according to a recent piece in the New Yorker.

Here's a summary of what my pal Chris could contribute:

Hitchens is nothing if not provocative. Creationists are “yokels,” Pascal’s theology is “not far short of sordid,” the reasoning of the Christian writer C. S. Lewis is “so pathetic as to defy description,” Calvin was a “sadist and torturer and killer,” Buddhist sayings are “almost too easy to parody,” most Eastern spiritual discourse is “not even wrong,” Islam is “a rather obvious and ill-arranged set of plagiarisms,” Hanukkah is a “vapid and annoying holiday,” and the psalmist King David was an “unscrupulous bandit.”

Now, I'd say those are a number of dudes who could make AtheistFest 2008 a truly rocking party. Sordid sadists, torturers, bandits, plagiarists (OK, I got that covered).... Infidels of the world, UNITE! (Donations and scheduling suggestions welcome).

is it just me?

Is it just me, or has Kingfisher taken notice of my letter writing campaign against glycerine (see "you can stop the madness" dec. '06)?

Here's the back story: The other day we stooped to visiting the new Ruby Tuesdays in GKII and all they had to offer us was Royal Challenge beer-- OK, I know, I know, Ruby Tuesdays? That dismal airport bar? But this is India, where, apparently, Jagermeister is the epitome of "posh" . We dithered, considered relocating to Flames, but decided that we can only go there so many times per week. Royal Challenge it was. Then it arrived, ice cold. And, if my taste buds, numbed from excessive consumption of hoppy IPAs in the good old US of A, were not deceiving me, there was not a drop of glycerine in the stuff. It tasted, in fact, like a halfway decent Pilsner.

Immediately, I regretted spending my money on a case of big bottles of Kingfisher a few minutes earlier at the booze shop. They hadn't had the small bottles (see "you can stop the madness" post), and they were out of Fosters and Castle. I hadn't even considered Royal Challenge. However, the next day when I cracked the first one open (ok, maybe it was later that night), I couldn't taste any glycerine in it either. The next one, too. A fluke? Had I lost my ability to taste the disgusting honey-flavored gunk? Maybe it was just a magic case? I don't know. But I'm still hoping that our letters have actually paid off.

pankaj mishra in the NYRB

Pankaj Mishra's review of Martha Nussbaum's new book The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India's Future appeared this week in the New York Review of Books. It's one of those reviews that endeavor to make reading the book unnecessary, rather than passing judgment on it, but from the looks of things the ground it covers is too well-trodden for the book to be of much interest to Indians. Here are some of the main points:

Nussbaum, who is engaged in a passionate attempt to end "American ignorance of India's history and current situation," makes the "genocidal violence" against Muslims in Gujarat the "focal point" of her troubled reflections on democracy in India. She points to forensic evidence which indicates that the fire in the train was most likely caused by a kerosene cooking stove carried by one of the Hindu pilgrims. In any case, as Nussbaum points out, there is "copious evidence that the violent retaliation was planned by Hindu extremist organizations before the precipitating event."
...
Describing the BJP's quest for a culturally homogeneous Hindu nation-state, Nussbaum wishes to introduce her Western readers to "a complex and chilling case of religious violence that does not fit some common stereotypes about the sources of religious violence in today's world." Nussbaum claims that "most Americans are still inclined to believe that religious extremism in the developing world is entirely a Muslim matter." She hints that at least part of this myopia must be blamed on Samuel Huntington's hugely influential "clash of civilizations" argument, which led many to believe that the world is "currently polarized between a Muslim monolith, bent on violence, and the democratic cultures of Europe and North America."

Nussbaum points out that India, a democracy with the third-largest Muslim population in the world, doesn't fit Huntington's theory of a clash between civilizations. The real clash exists

within virtually all modern nations —between people who are prepared to live with others who are different, on terms of equal respect, and those who seek the... domination of a single religious and ethnic tradition.
...
Nussbaum thus casts India's experience of democracy in an unfamiliar role: as a source of important lessons for Americans. Such brisk overturning of conventional perspective has distinguished Nussbaum's varied writings, which move easily from the ideas of Stoic philosophers to international development. Few contemporary philosophers in the West have reckoned with India's complex experience of democracy; and even fewer have engaged with it as vigorously as she does in The Clash Within.
....
However, Nussbaum's strongly felt and stimulating book deepens rather than answers the question: How did India's democracy, commonly described as the biggest in the world, become so vulnerable to religious extremism?

Ideological fanaticism stemming from personal inadequacies, such as the one Nussbaum identifies in Arun Shourie, is certainly to blame. But as Nussbaum herself outlines in her chapter on Gujarat, religious violence in India today cannot be separated from the recent dramatic changes in the country's economy and politics. The individual defects of Indian politicians only partly explain the great and probably insuperable social and economic conflicts that give India's democracy its particular momentum and anarchic vitality.
...
Fortunately, a large majority of poor and religious Indians do not live within the modern culture of materialism; they are invulnerable to the glamour of the CEO, the investment banker, the PR executive, the copywriter, and other gurus of the West's fully organized consumer societies. Traditional attitudes toward the natural environment make Indians, like the Japanese, more disposed than Americans to pursue happiness modestly.[15] And almost six decades after his assassination, Gandhi's traditionalist emphasis on austerity and self-abnegation remains a powerful part of Indian identity.
....

the critic

Newsweek asked me to do a funny feature this week called "Correspondent's Picks." To some degree, I pointed out the obvious. But it was cool to see a piece called "Jason Overdorf's favorite restaurants in Chennai." Eat your heart out Anthony Bourdain. Check it out in the post below.