AD-LIB

Came across this poem in a novel by Alan Titchmarsh and I simply cannot resist quoting this in my post. I will not be cremated but I do want loved ones to remember these lines while remembering me at my funeral. Here goes…
‘Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning’s hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry:
I am not there. I did not die.’

HOW THE AUTHORS OF 'OPAL MEHTA'-S GET FAMOUS, GET INFAMOUS AND GET OSTRACISED FOR LIFE

Wining and dining at S.D.’s was the fun stuff that it always is—a lot of good food with alchohol and conversation, both of which just ceased to flow. Darby and I met A.di for the first time and I have to say this. I have never seen anyone wear such a crisp white shirt before. I would even a few days ago take pride in mine but I abdicate the throne. Moving away from such frivolous sartorial details, let me type my impression of A.di, someone I’d love to be in touch with. She is one vocal, feisty and fun woman. She is an ex-colleague of S.D.’s and we had already heard so many good things about her. S.D. had told us in detail the effort and vigour that A.di would put in everything she did at the hell-hole of a university they both taught in. But she just ‘had to’ leave the place the moment she had the opportunity for it seems she couldn’t have survived there. And I don’t blame her. One might ask “why not stay there and fight the system?” but the survivors there who make any sense confess that with the ‘crab mentality’ abounding there, no decent or honest work gets done. And that has been the case for over 15 years. A.di now stays in New Zealand with her husband and son. She has successfully completed a creative writing course, one of the best in that country and plans to devote herself to full-time writing. She seems to be indebted to her former workplace for two reasons—1)one because it has taught her that good people are the same all over the world and bad people are the same all over the world, too, and 2) had it not been for her terrifying work experience there, she wouldn’t have discovered the writer in her. Incidentally, it has left such an indelible impression on her creative mind that her dissertation is an impish campus novel. She is currently working on getting her work published in India and I hope she tastes success.

Our free flowing discussion that day covered as diverse topics as the current absurd questioning by Heathrow Airport officials of Indians they presumably think might tell them something about the Mumbai terror attacks(guffaw!), the increasingly democratic tendency seen in the selection of Rhodes Scholars in the recent years, a Jewish friend of A.D.’s who is a devout believer and a homosexual simultaneously, how he tries reconciling these contraries in his life, and plagiarism. I learned a couple of things. Supposedly, Indians and Koreans are the most notorious when it comes to plagiarising. I am not surprised that Indians make it somewhere to the top of that list because poor us! We do not even understand the concept of plagisrising and how serious its implications can be, precisely because a majority of us go through the entire grind of education in our country (even higher education) through the tried and tested method of ‘rote and mug’. Koreans, I was informed, apparently take the cake. Whereas tutorials in India often ensure that the same material is produced by all their beneficiaries in examinations, where even university professors are guilty of writing lectures where they ‘harmlessly’ lift from other sources, in Korea, the best essay adjudged by a teacher in a language class is copied by all the students as per the instructions of the teacher!!! This, my friends, is the norm there. I don’t know which is worse. And then we talk about brain drain and how the best are leaving India for greener pastures. Have we ever pondered over the fact that may be not all, but so many leave their own homeland because their efforts are wasted in the by lanes of redtapism and because their best work goes unappreciated in their own land? People are too busy celebrating mediocrity and accepting lack of originality time and again in almost all spheres of life to bother about the ones we lose to foreign shores.Brain drain is happening every day all around us in our country—in our homes, in seats of learning, at workplaces, in election booths. And I call it brain drain because I find all around me a culture that ingrains in its followers a tendency not to question, a perverse desire to nip doubts in their buds without letting them grow, without quashing them with reason and convincing logic. I feel responsible as a teacher to ask my students to think, to analyse, to question and not accept anything or anyone at face value. And if I have failed in fulfilling this moral duty, I have failed to do my job.
P.S. I must make one point clear about this post. I do not think at all that Kaavya Vishwanathan was oblivious to the fact that hers was a case of blatant plagiarism. What I was referring to is academic plagiarism in classroom notes and answers found in tests. Students in India find framing answers by lifting passages from critics a completely innocuous exercise.

Darby has ruined any hope that I had left of a cozy luncheon this Tuesday with two rather erudite Professors of Philosophy who seem to inhabit two opposite poles, and a famous Italian novelist. What would have been really interesting is that the novelist happens to be a high school teacher. It seems Darby's chronic tummy troubles need to be addressed and resolved first. However, I have something else to look forward to - a rather interesting wining-and-dining experience at S.D.'s tomorrow evening. We will also have the pleasure of meeting an ex-colleague of S.D.'s who, as trusted sources inform me, has something in common with me. We both cherish teasing S.D. Can't wait for sunset tomorrow.
Spent yesterday morning watching 'Savage Grace' and spent the afternoon wondering what is it that attracts me to troubled, dysfunctional characters. I still have no clue, but will come up shortly with a personal review of the film.

AD-LIB

Somehow I feel so proud to be an average Indian today. I learned a little while ago that Major Unnikrishnan's father refused to let the Kerala Chief Minister inside his house. And yesterday, Karkare's wife refused Narendra Modi's offer of a crore. The average Indian needs to stand up for his/her dignity as a human being, even if that means merely humiliating the representatives they had chosen to electoral power and who have repeatedly failed them.

CITIZENSPEAK

I feel sorry for the Congress pre-elections. I feel sorry for Ratan Tata post-Nandigram-Singur. 2008 has been unkind to them. But, though down, they are not quite out.

What about the 183 who have died? What about their families? What about the hundreds of others who will recover from their injuries but suffer from the trauma for the rest of their lives? What about the millions in a nation who will feel helplessness and fear every time they step out of their homes or lock their doors at night? What about our security forces that will have to expend time, effort and money to replace the 14 who have laid down their lives in the line of duty? What about them? What about you and me—the Bihari, the Mumbaikar, the Bangalorean, the Delhite—who waited 60 long hours for a nightmare to end and who are living with a lurking fear that it may begin again any day?

You and me—we are no intelligence experts, we are no ministers deciding on the defence budget. We are merely India’s citizens who can speak up and demand our right to feel empowered. I want to feel empowered with the knowledge that my India gives me the right to be safe in any place of the country, with the knowledge that I can have Muslim friends visiting my home without being suspected, with the knowledge that no Chief Minister will offer my family a measly crore for the loss of a dear one, with the knowledge that 25 misguided, crazed young men at a time will never again make life come to a standstill.

I do not know for sure where that power will come from. I may sound naïve when I say that I have a nebulous hope that the power might just come from you and me…from our shedding our deceiving belief that it cannot happen to us, from our shedding our apathy to take the time to look around, stay alert and reach out to all who may need us to stand by them, from our decision never, just never to let go.

Sanjana Kapoor was right when she said that this is not a war for in a war you know who you are up against. Here we are in the dark, groping for answers that will hardly help. It just might be impossible to win this battle but we need to pledge our solidarity against these forces of the dark. The sad truth is that, after all, it is a reality we will have to learn to grapple with. It is a matter of our survival—yours, mine and every Indian’s.

BLOWIN' IN THE WIND

It has been impossible to watch television in the last two days and not wonder what is real and what virtual. For it is playing out like a video game in Mumbai, even as we try and fail to really comprehend the enormity of it all.

Yes, and how many times can a man turn his head
And pretend that he just doesen't see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

Yes, and how many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, and how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, and how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

SEPULCHRAL

As terror rips apart Mumbai, I cannot help but recall a scene from the movie ‘Match Point’ where a murdered woman returns to haunt the murderer, asking him why she had to be killed when the target was someone else. The accused nonchalantly says something to the effect that when the cause is important, innocent bystanders are killed as history has shown us so many times. Innocent bystanders—Mumbaikars—no longer need to show their resilience. It is time not to move on but to fight back. Don’t be resilient. Break down to become whole again. Even as I say this, my words ring hollow. Only when our own suffer, do we realize what it means to be innocent bystanders. I feel anger and helplessness, and yet hopeful as I recall Shelley:

PROMETHEUS UNBOUND(Act IV)
Demogorgon:
This the day, which down the void abysm
At the Earth-born’s spell yawns for heaven’s despotism,
And conquest is dragged captive through the deep;
Love, from its awful throne of patient power
In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour
Of dread endurance, from the slippery steep,
And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs
And folds over the world its healing wings
Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance,
These are the seals of that most firm assurance
Which bars the pit over Destruction’s strength;
And if with infirm hand, Eternity,
Mother of many acts and hours, should free
The serpent that would clasp her with his length,
These are the spells by which to reassume
An empire o’er the disentangled doom.
To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates
Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;
This, like thy glory, Titan! Is to be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory!