Om's 90 per cent fraud

I’m very annoyed by this trick Om Book Shop has been pulling, claiming to offer discounts of up to 90 per cent on some of its titles. Now the discounts on most of the books range between 10 and 20 per cent, and those are all above board. Many other bookstores in Delhi have similar schemes. My problem is with the titles that the shop is claiming to sell at very high discounts, when there’s actually a measure of duplicity involved; customers not in the know are being misled.

What’s happening is this: the supposed 70/80/90 per cent discounts on most of the international titles (certainly the recent ones) are not on the IBH prices but on the rupee equivalents of the pound/dollar prices on the book jackets. So it seems like the discount being offered is a mammoth one whereas actually the discounted price is not all that different from the price you’d pay for the same book at other bookstores offering just 10 per cent discounts.

Example: I picked up Gregory David Roberts’ Shantaram from Om today for Rs 350. This, supposedly, is after a 77 per cent discount on the original price, which they claim is Rs 1488. Now as a books journo I can promise you that even when Shantaram had newly arrived in stores a few months ago, in hardback, the IBH price was nowhere near 1400 rupees. What Om has done is to take the pound value (16.99 pounds), convert it into rupees and then magnanimously bestow a “77 per cent discount” on it.

Now, having spleen-vented, let me admit that if I had bought a first-hand copy of Shantaram from anywhere else I probably would have had to shell out at least Rs 50-100 more (which is why I bought it from Om). So strictly speaking, this is in fact the best deal. The problem is one of principle, and of scale. What’s happening here is that people who aren’t regular book-buyers (and therefore unaware of the complete picture) are being fooled into thinking they are getting fantastic deals the likes of which wouldn’t be found anywhere else. That stinks.

PVR Talkies!

Walking home from the PVR Saket complex this evening, a copy of Shantaram in one hand and a bag of shwarmas in the other, I encountered a group of men dressed in dhotis and worn shirts, who asked me for directions. They looked like they had been walking a very long distance.

“Bhai saab, yeh PVR taakis kahan hai?” one asked me, or at least that’s what it sounded like.

I figured they meant the movie hall but couldn’t be completely sure; for all I knew, any number of new buildings/offices/dhabas might have come up in the colony that were informally called PVR-something-or-the-other. When I hesitated momentarily, one of the other men said “jahan phillum lagti hai” and simultaneously the first one said “PVR taakis” again. I directed them to the hall and walked off, realizing that what the first guy had meant was “PVR Talkies”. That was so cool. PVR Talkies. Jahan talking picture dekhne ko milta hai. Takes you right back to another era, doesn’t it, while also serving as a reminder that many movie theatres outside of the big cities are still referred to that way.

Anyway, I loved it, partly because of the nostalgia I sometimes feel for what the PVR complex used to be like 15, or even 10, years ago (but that’s material for another blog). PVR Talkies. Wonder what Ajay Bijli would have to say about that.

Do the math, people

If, like me and countless others, you’re getting addicted to Sudoku, you might want to read this article from the Financial Times. Steven Pincock writes:

"...the odd thing is that newspapers make a point of saying that the puzzles require no mathematics. This is perhaps unsurprising given the number of people who get scared off the subject in high school, but it is wrong... mathematicians don’t spend their days working through page after page of mind-numbing arithmetic. Rather, they bend their minds to finding ways to solve problems that are often deeply conceptual. They approach those challenges using the kind of strategic thinking you need to employ in tackling Sudoku puzzles."

But enough about Sudoku, let’s talk about me.

Pincock’s column was of interest to me because I was always pretty good at Maths in school, and more to the point I have something of a number fetish. I tend to be very clued in to people’s years of birth for instance (and not just people I know well) and enjoy thinking about number permutations and combinations in general. At times it gets very intense - even when I’m driving and see a car number plate I play around with the arrangements in my mind and more often than not succeed in relating them to something else. So I was somewhat bemused by all this talk about Suduko "having nothing to do with Maths". Oh well, glad to see someone agrees.

For anyone who hasn’t got in on the Sudoku craze yet and has access to the Hindustan Times, the puzzle now appears there daily. Started last week. It’s a bit silly the way they’ve gone about it - the first two puzzles were Difficulty Level 1, but then in the next three days they rapidly moved up to levels 2, 3 and 4. This is hardly a very user-friendly approach; the latest one took me more than half an hour to solve and it’s probably much worse for people who are scared of numbers to begin with.

Sudoku basics here.

Two silly TV ads I’ve recently seen...

(...even though I hardly watch TV these days)

One, this new spot featuring the venerable Zohra Sehgal (what is she now, 95?) and the disrespectable Shoaib Akhtar, an ad where (like in so many others) it’s impossible to figure out the product being advertised until the brand name is actually thrown into your face. Ms Sehgal challenges Shoaib to bowl at her, he sneers patronisingly, she asks him if he’s afraid, he starts his run up, bowls/chucks the ball, and it ricochets off a glass wall just in front of her. Voila, the ad was for Stronglass, a cleverly named brand of strong glass.

Principal objection: the irrelevance of the concept to the product. It might as well have turned out to be a condom ad (no wait, that’s Rahul Dravid, in an earnest promotion that equates facing fast bowlers with protecting yourself from AIDS. But I love the Dravid ad because of the delightfully inappropriate vision it conjures up of the Wall facing up to McGrath, Gillespie etc wearing only a prophylactic. Excellent.)

Secondary objection: even though the Shoaib-Zohra ad ends on a happy-happy note, it’s difficult to erase the mental image of the dear old lady getting her head knocked clean off. Or messy off. Too morbid even for my liking.

Two, the lemon tea (?) ad, one of the countless take-offs on Sholay, which has "Arre o Samba" Mac Mohan (still sitting on a high rock and looking not very different from 30 years ago) finally facing up to the mean Gabbar, and all because he’s been emboldened by a sip of the tea.

Principal objection: the last image in the ad before the final product shot is that of the incensed Gabbar-lookalike pointing his gun at this new, impudent Samba. Now I’m no ad-man but isn’t it self-defeating to tell your customers, you’ll be shot dead shortly after your first taste of our tea?

More observations to follow, though it’ll depend on how much TV I watch. Meanwhile, Duck of Destiny quacks some nice things here about ad people, like "Their faces are so warm." Good duck.

Gilead

It’s a frustrating job trying to reason with people who believe that certain types of books – no matter how well written, sensitive or empathetic – just aren’t relevant to them because of the place or time period they are set in. You’d be surprised how many people I know (and I’m talking about dedicated readers, people who are capable of writing thoughtful reviews themselves) who will cheerfully read the most mediocre Indian fiction in English but will be close-minded to some of the world’s greatest writers – Roth, Murakami, Marquez for instance – because, as Indians living in a particular world, dealing with particular issues, they can’t “relate to them”.

I suppose I shouldn’t be judgemental – to each his own, and why interfere with other people’s reading tastes etc– but this irks because these are people who I’m convinced would get a lot out of the books they reject, if only they opened their minds and hearts to them.

I was thinking about all this as I came to the end of Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer-winning Gilead, a quiet, graceful little book that on the face of it seems to have so little to do with “our world”. It’s set in 1956 in the small town of Gilead, Iowa, and it’s told in the voice of a 76-year-old man who has seen scarcely anything of the world outside this town: this is Reverend John Ames, in the twilight of his life, writing a book-length letter to his seven-year-old son who he fears will never really get to know him.

In Gilead, Robinson’s simple, beautiful prose gives us the story of a man unafraid to admit that even after a lifetime of prayer he sometimes struggles with the moral compass, and with his own flaws. In his soft, measured way the reverend admits to feelings of insecurity, even jealousy, the pain of a life marked by patches of deep loneliness, an inability to forgive certain things and to come to terms with the unhappy relationship between his pacifist father and his abolitionist grandfather, a relationship that cast a pall over the family. He also mulls on death and atheism, speaks with wonder about the beauty there is to be found in the littlest, most everyday things, discusses his experience baptizing a litter of kittens (“the sensation of really knowing a creature, I mean really feeling its mysterious life and your own mysterious life at the same thing”). There is deep, residual melancholy as he talks of a girl he was briefly married to in his youth, who died in childbirth, and his daughter, who would have been 51 years old if she’d survived.

At the heart of the reverend’s story is his relationship with his best friend’s son, named after him, who did something terrible a long time ago, something the reverend has never been able to find it in his heart to forgive or understand. The sin committed by the younger John Ames (impregnating and then deserting a young girl) goes so far against the grain of the reverend’s own strong feelings about the responsibilities parents have towards their children (feelings that are exacerbated by the loss of his own wife and child 50 years earlier) that it takes him the span of the book to conquer his bitterness and make his peace with his namesake. But the reconciliation, when it comes, is therapeutic for both men.

The basic structure of Gilead might seem like something from the self-help section of a bookstore, but it’s deeper, more thoughtful and ambiguous than the “Monk Who Sold his Alchemist” variety of titles. Having said that, it won’t appeal to all readers, especially those who might get put off by the specificity of Christian references. I wanted to take the easy way out and not write about it at all. Partly because the reading experience was a strange one - while reading it I just went along with the flow of Robinson’s story. I was carried along by her soothing writing style and didn’t think too deeply about the things the book was trying to say, or its merits and demerits. (Maybe that’s the best approach anyway, but it’s a difficult one when you’re reviewing professionally.) When you’re moving gently to and fro in a rocking chair and everything around you is still and quiet and there’s a cool breeze blowing, you don’t necessarily want to think very profound thoughts.

But if I really like something, at whatever level, I try to write about it regardless of how scattered my thoughts are. This is a book that grew on me, and having finished it I sometimes open it and read a passage at random, to soak in the beauty of Robinson’s writing.

Here’s a passage for instance that somehow reminds me of the beautiful evening scene in Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, where the knight and his squire have a rare moment of respite, eating strawberries and milk with the performing troupe.

“The moon looks wonderful in this warm evening light, just as a candle flame looks beautiful in the light of morning. Light within light. It seems like a metaphor for something. So much does. Ralph Waldo Emerson is excellent on this point.

It seems to me to be a metaphor for the human soul, the singular light within the great general light of existence. Or it seems like poetry within language. Perhaps wisdom within experience. Or marriage within friendship and love. I’ll try to remember to use this.”

Googled: now he’s an ‘it’

One of the Google searches that led someone to my site was “Sachin Tendulkar and its achievements”.

Its? “Its”? No, really? We know many of you don’t like him anymore but he’s still a human being, people! He isn’t just a, uh, bruised elbow or something.

(P.S. the suhaag raat motif continues. New searches include ‘enjoyable suhaag raat’ and ‘pictures of suhaag raat sex’. Which of you was it now? Own up.)

Testing: first post from my laptop...

...and Samit, this one's just a two-liner. Now a new era begins.

And while I’m ranting about newspapers...

What is with the “an era has come to an end” every time a famous person dies? Are there really as many eras as there are famous people? Lazy, lazy reporters!

It's May, and happy new year

Many of the international comic strips that appear daily in newspapers have this annoying habit of turning maudlin on “special” occasions, notably Christmas and New Year (sometimes July 4 too, or Thanksgiving or Halloween). At such times you’ll have special one-panel strips featuring the entire cast of characters beaming out at the reader, saying “Have a great 2005!” or “Trick or Treat!” or “Let’s all conserve fuel together!” or some such. The concept is annoying at the best of times - who wants to see Tom and Jerry, or Garfield and Odie, or Dennis the Menace and Mr Wilson, put aside their differences for a day and pose arm in arm? (And don’t get me started on Dennis dressed up as a firefighter, asking for a minute’s silence for the victims of 9/11.) But you know when it’s worse? When you turn to the comics section of a leading Indian daily on May 25 and find Archie and the gang (Hot Dog, Mr Lodge, the works) yelling “Happy New Year!”

Now we understand that the syndication agreements that allow comic strips to be featured in foreign newspapers are complicated, inflexible things - there isn’t much (if any) scope for the order of the strips to be tampered with, or for a newspaper to leave out a comic one day at its discretion. And naturally the dates of original publication will differ from the dates of use in the foreign newspaper. But can we pleez to be having 250 gram of common sense at least? (I know, I know, that’s a rich expectation given the editorial standards of the “leading dailies”.)

Exactly what kind of cerebral activity is at work when the sub-editor/page-in-charge picks up the comic strip for the day and fits it in the blank space on the Quark file? Or is everyone in the newspaper office so careworn that they don’t bother to actually look at the strips any more? The comic strips for heaven’s sake, the first things most of us learnt to look at in newspapers, and often still the most ennobling things in them.

It’s probably just that there’s too much else to do that’s more important - like getting all the names right in the captions on the P3 party photos.

Meeting Chandrahas: of lit-blogging and clean-bowling Dravid

Met another Wisden luminary (actually, a soon to be former Wisden luminary) Chandrahas Choudhury yesterday over a buffet lunch at Q’BA, that incongruously plush lounge-restaurant in Connaught Place. Chandrahas has been co-blogging with Amit Varma at The Middle Stage and the Indian blogosphere has been richer for his incisive literary posts. It was one of these posts that got us started on a discussion about the merits of literary blogging.

In this piece on Monica Ali’s Brick Lane, Chandrahas had drawn attention to a passage where an ice-skating competition is described purely through the perspective of the protagonist, Nazneen, who has never seen such a thing before in her life. Chandrahas wrote: As readers, we may realise soon enough that Nazneen is looking at two ice-skaters, but that’s not the point of the passage – the point is to show us how this scene is understood by Nazneen, the cues from which she tries to decipher its significance. The satisfaction we feel at being allowed to experience Nazneen's misreading is the satisfaction of feeling in absolutely intimate contact with the worldview of another human being.

When I first read Chandrahas’s post, I realised that I had been struck by that passage in exactly the same way when I read the book a couple of years ago. Back then, I had reviewed Brick Lane for Business Standard. But the review had to be structured, all-encompassing; there was no way I could have taken out that one passage and written about it as particularly as Chandrahas did in his blog. At any rate, I couldn't have used up many words on it.

This is one of the areas where blogging can be so therapeutic. Quite often these days I don’t feel up to writing a comprehensive review of a book or a film; making definitive statements, describing the plot, supplying character capsules. I find it more rewarding to just home in on some passages/scenes that hold importance for me, mull over them, try to convey to others what I saw in them, perhaps use them to make larger points about the book or the writer’s style. It’s not easy to do something like this when you’re reviewing for mainstream publications, which require a holistic approach, but blogging does permit it, as readers of some of my posts on films and books will know. (Incidentally, I always get a bit defensive when people refer to my unstructured posts on movies/books as “reviews”.) Done well, I believe this approach has even greater potential for elucidating a book’s themes than conventional reviewing does.

(Even when you want to carry on with conventional reviewing, blogging helps. Often I’ve informally recorded my thoughts on a blog post, and then expanded/formalised that post into a review.)

Anyway, lest it be thought though that Chandrahas and I were just sitting there professorially and having a deeply intellectual literary conversation, we weren’t. We discussed other things that have also come up in my previous blogger meets: notably cricket. Chandrahas conducted a very interesting interview with Virender Sehwag on Tuesday. I don’t know if I should reveal details here, so it’s enough to say that the approach was very different to your standard Q&A session, and you can look out for it in the August issue of Wisden magazine.

Readers, I can now claim to have had lunch with two people who have clean bowled Rahul Dravid. Beaten the guy all ends up. Straight through the gate, as they say. Never saw the ball coming the Wall did, as Yoda would say. (Amit and Chandrahas’s moments of glory came in the hallowed Wisden office corridors a few months ago, when Dravid and Mohammad Kaif visited the office, and now it’s necessary for them to have children just so they can tell their grandkids about it sometime in the future.)

We also discussed: how nervous waiters tend to be at buffets. How Delhi and Mumbai are expanding. The proposed Noida Eye, which should provide tourists with lovely views of the bloated corpses in the Yamuna. Antique book shelves. And the many science-fiction books that Chandrahas wants to give away for some reason. I’m waiting with open arms.

English titles for Hindi films: Neither do you know, neither do I

Have been reading a book titled Bollyworld: Popular Indian Cinema Through a Transnational Lens, with essays on topics ranging from the contrasting personae of Fearless Nadia and Devika Rani in films of the 1930s to notions of “Indianness” as represented in NRI-targetting films of the late 1990s and beyond. There’s plenty here that’s good – I enjoyed the Nadia chapter, written by Rosie Thomas, as also Sudhanva Deshpande’s “The Consumable Hero of Globalised India”, about the changes in the Bollywood leading man post-liberalisation.

Inevitably, some of the essays are bombastic, full of words and phrases like “transformative modality”, “hermeneutics of self” and “totalizing formations”, usually all in the same sentence. (Damn you, Academia!) To be fair, this sort of thing can be edifying. If you successfully get through two consecutive paras of such writing without eye-glaze setting in, you can literally feel your brain expanding, like Maggi noodles bubbling and spilling over in an untended bowl. This mind-swell happened to me no fewer than three times during the scintillatingly titled chapter “Belonging and Respect Notions vis-à-vis Modern East Indians: Hindi Movies in the Guyanese East Indian Diaspora”, and it felt good. But then, in a chapter dealing with the Bachchan character in Deewaar, I came across the following passage:

“The raw materials for micropolitical redemption exist beyond the scope of the nationalist imaginary…Vijay also violently unsettles the distinctions between citizen and stranger, and hence of the reductive parameters of ‘nationalist’ discourse. For if his only function is to reflect back upon the territorial integrity and mythical self-appointment of the unified nation-state, then this effectively ignores the ways in which his cultural identity exists as dynamic process rather than static emblem.”

Disheartened, I turned for light entertainment to the many English translations of Hindi-film titles scattered throughout the book. Each time a film is mentioned, an all-too-literal English version of the title is included in parentheses, along with the date of release, e.g. Pyaasa ( Thirsty, 1957) or Kabhi Kabhie (Sometimes, 1976). Now the interesting thing about this is, it isn’t done merely for the benefit of readers who don’t understand Hindi and want to know what the title means. Most of these are the “official” English titles of Hindi films, to be found on DVD/video cassette covers around the world. And most of them are direct translations, completely bereft of any dramatic weight. Consider the following, all taken from references in this book:

Parvarish (Nurture)

Mard (Man)

Trishul (Trident)

Sharaabi (Drunkard)

Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (Something or Other is Happening)

Kaho Na Pyaar Hai (Say That There is Love)

Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani (Still the Heart Remains Indian)

Na Tum Jaano Na Hum (Neither Do You Know, Neither Do I

Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (alternately The Brave Heart Shall Take the Bride or The Bold Shall Win the Bride)

[it probably isn’t coincidence that DDLJ was released in the same year as Mel Gibson’s Braveheart]

Exactly which viewers is all this literalism aimed at? People who understand Hindi won’t need the translations, except possibly for comic relief, and those who don’t…well, what exactly will they gather about the film from the above titles?

It’s no secret that the original Hindi titles of Bollywood movies have been getting increasingly moronic - the stultifying trend these days being that of titles based on songs featured in earlier movies, which has resulted in one big incestuous mess, with a new Abhishek Bachchan film deriving its title from a song in a Hrithik Roshan movie, which in turn was named after a song in a Shah Rukh Khan movie; how do even the most avid Bollywood buffs tell the films apart? (And while we’re at it, what happened to the good old rat race? These days everyone makes guest appearances in everyone else’s movies. Except for Aamir Khan, who scowls down at the other rats from his ivory tower, Bollywood is just one big beaming family…but that’s material for another rant.)

Anyway, why don’t publicists abroad take the opportunity to make translated titles more representative? A few years ago, while copy-editing articles for Encyclopaedia Britannica’s book on Indian cinema, I discovered to my everlasting delight that Deewaar has been distributed overseas under the title I’ll Die For Mama! (Made me think of the James Cagney melodrama White Heat, with its climactic shout “Made it, ma! Made it to the top of the world!”) Now in one sense, I’ll Die For Mama! is a silly title, which contributes to the caricaturing of a film that’s quieter and maturer than many think. But at least it’s more inventive and to the point than the sterile, more frequently used The Wall, which says nothing at all about the movie.

So, suggestions please: what should Na Tum Jaano Na Hum really translate into on the foreign cassette cover? I’m not getting in on this; I suggested Soggy Hindu Family Mess for Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham (in place of Sometimes Happiness, Sometimes Sadness) but it was rejected.

Rage against the machine Part 2: Revenge of the Singh

Have spent most of the day trying to get through to Tata Indicom’s “helpline” numbers.

Progress thus far:

- 24 calls that began promisingly, with a computerised voice saying “This is Tata Indicom Customer Care” - but were then disconnected almost immediately.

- Got through to a human voice three times but each time the line was disconnected after exactly 12 seconds (or at exactly the point where I was saying the words “...need a cable for...”)

- Finally, an assertive message saying “You have called during non-working hours. Our working hours are 7 AM to 11 PM.” I made the call at 11.55 AM.

So this is what they mean by telecommunications. I’m cancelling my subscription now.

UPDATE
Another firsthand encounter with the Power of Blogging. Just 4-5 hours after I made those posts complaining about Tata Indicom, I got a call from a very polite public relations executive based in Mumbai, asking me for details of my “complaint” - the blog transcript had apparently been forwarded to her by a company official who trawls the Internet for this sort of thing. Next thing, the Delhi office calls up offering to send someone to my house to check the laptop and the phone and work out what cable I need. Should happen today. Oh well.

You should visit my blog if...

...you’re looking for:

“Nehru and his funny things”

“Dialogue from the film Coolie”

“What to say at a book launch”

“Suhaag raat stories”

So says Google at any rate (courtesy BlogPatrol, which has recommenced operations on my blog, after taking a couple of months off in between).

Rage against the machine

My life has turned into a techno-nightmare. My room seems suddenly to be full of coiled wires and devices with large batteries that need regular charging, so that all I seem to be doing in my spare time is unplugging one battery and putting in another. A laptop and a Tata Indicom wireless (#$%!!#) are the new additions, to go with earlier stuff like the cellphone, but the tragedy is that so far none of it has made my life any richer. It’s like Anakin Skywalker waking up to find he has a cool black suit and mask but no one likes him any more. I’m still unconnected.

This sad tale began some 12 moons ago, when I bought a new laptop. “At last!” I shouted to myself in glee, “This is where I show that Amit Varma a thing or five about blogging prolificity. I’ll be the epitome of Tech Kool now, reclining against the headrest, laptop on my knee, churning out sentence after delectable sentence like a 21st century version of Papa Hemingway. No more making untidy notes on paper and then waiting till morning to type them out in office. Best of all, I’ll have the Internet on Tap.”

It didn’t take me long to discover that “internet on tap” was an apposite description for all the wrong reasons; in Saket the broadband situation is worse than the water supply one. Sify advertisements have been lying around the house for months now, but try calling any of the numbers and you get an error message. Ditto for Reliance. And though I got through to Airtel, for some reason it took them three days to revert and tell me they didn’t have network coverage in my colony yet; “maybe in another two or three months”. This in a place just 200 yards from the famous PVR complex, where the city’s most happening people congregate to watch films and occasionally be evacuated after bomb scares.

Meanwhile the laptop was yet to be registered and I was getting desperate, so I turned to the only option left: Tata Indicom’s wireless phone service. Since then, as they used to say of Orson Welles post-Citizen Kane, it’s been all downhill. In the last few days I’ve seen far more than I would ever have liked of this droopy-faced man from Tata Indicom, who always manages to do something wrong. I rave and rant, he hears me out, nods sadly, assures me I’m right to feel displeased...and then takes money for something or the other and comes back the next day not having done what was required. And still looking sad.

Despite assuring me at our first meeting that his company provides Internet service to lots of customers in my colony, this droopy Tata man turns out to know nothing at all about actually providing the connection. One day he shows up with the wrong installation CD. The next day he brings an incompatible “lead cable”. The third day he brings an overconfident colleague who nearly destroys the laptop in various innovative ways, including trying to shove the CD drive in with half the CD still hanging out of it. And I have to keep making up excuses to leave office early, because none of these people are willing to work after 6 PM.

The upshot is, I’m still Net-less. I have to come to office at 9 to blog - me, a member of a tribe of feature journalists who are never expected to rise before 11. The laptop spends most of its time in its case. Cords wind sinuously around my room. There are frantic beeping sounds when I forget to charge one of the batteries. Amit Varma keeps updating. And the only thing for me to do now is read Murakami’s Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, about a man whose life gets so strange that the only way he can deal with it is by sitting at the bottom of a deep dry well.

Word pukers

You know what’s ironical about the people who never adhere to specified word counts? They are, almost without exception, the most mediocre writers, the ones whose sentences overflow with redundancies. Tell them the space can accommodate 500 words max and they’ll file 900 words; sighing in the fashion of misunderstood geniuses whose creativity has been shackled by page layouts and small-minded editors, they’ll tell you there was no way they could possibly have done justice to the story/review/column within the specified word limit.

Then you turn to the atrociously written piece, start copy-editing it, tighten the writing, take out the many repeated phrases - and voila, when you’re done you’ll find the story is down to...exactly 500 words. And this without even having to excise anything of substance.

So why am I grumbling, it all works out anyway.

But seriously, it’s telling that the best writers among columnists/reporters will invariably stick to the word limit. More than once I’ve copy-pasted a column from a word file onto QuarkXpress to find - and it’s scary when this happens - that it exactly fits the pre-set space. No kerning required, no adding/removing para breaks or randomly taking out articles (the way sub-editors in this country like to do). This level of obsessive perfectionism derives at least partly from the fear common to the best writers that someone might cut their copy if it significantly overrides the word count. It should also derive from common sense, but that’s probably asking too much.

(Now no sarcastic remarks please about the size of some of my recent blog posts.)

The jabberwock slays Switzerland

This is a supposed travel piece I wrote after returning from cuckoo-clock-and-cuddly-cow land. Quick disclaimer: it isn’t really anything of the sort. It’s an ungracious, tasteless rant that was a lot of fun to write, as most ungracious, tasteless rants are; if someone started a magazine called Outlook Grumbler, this might make the grade.

As I’ve recorded elsewhere I didn’t have a great time on the trip, certainly not from the sightseeing point of view. (“No one ever returned from Switzerland unhappier than the Jabberwock,” proclaimed the reputed TV journalist Shamya Dasgupta, though not on TV.) But the editor needed a quick 1200 words to fill four pages in the magazine, so I turned this out with impunity, knowing it wouldn’t be cut.

Stylistic footnote: I’ve decided to use the phrase “moment of epiphany” in every second story I write. Just because I want to.

---------------

Give the Swiss a miss

The moment of epiphany comes somewhere along a highway trip from Lausanne to Geneva. I look up to see numerous jets streaking across an absurdly blue sky, leaving white trails in their wake, playing a mad empyrean game of noughts and crosses. Even though I know this is a two-dimensional picture, that the planes are all flying at different heights, it’s still disconcerting to see so many of them criss-crossing at once. “Is there an air force base near here?” I ask Gareth Jones, marketing man for the Financial Times in Switzerland, who’s been showing us around. “Oh no,” he guffaws, following my gaze. “Those are passenger jets. When the skies are so clear in these parts, you’ll see this many of them at most times.”

“We’re smack-dab in the middle of Europe, you know -- everyone passes through here!”

One of the annoying things about Switzerland, a landlocked nation that shares long borders with some of the most distinguished European countries (France, Germany, Italy), is this: it’s right in the centre of everything, but it still doesn’t really have a unique identity of its own. Discount the cliches -- the chocolates, Heidi, the beautiful scenery that countless Hindi film crews have appropriated over the decades -- and you have a place that never quite provides the sense of a culture or an ethos independent of its geographical position. It doesn’t even have its own language; the national languages are derived from the neighboring countries and are spoken in the parts of Switzerland that are closest to the respective borders -- German in the north and central regions, French in the west and Italian in the south. And uh yes, there’s also Romansh, a derivative of Latin.

This cultural aridity is nicely summed up in a monologue written by Orson Welles for his character Harry Lime in the film The Third Man:

“In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love -- they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”

But Harry Lime was being uncharitable -- Switzerland has given us loads of very fancy watches as well. And my colleague Rakesh and I are here to cover the international watch fair in Basel. Which means much of our time before leaving was spent telling envious friends that no, we wouldn’t be frolicking about the countryside, we’d be spending all our time closeted in huge halls surrounded by timepieces, discussing tourbillon movements with CEOs and vice-presidents.

That’s pretty much how it turns out too. BaselWorld is enormous, classy, superbly organised and a haven for any watch-lover, but it’s scarcely the place to be if outdoor sightseeing is what you’re looking for. So Rakesh and I make the most of the hourlong train ride from Zurich -- where we’re staying -- to Basel. The countryside is as beautiful as you might expect -- if what you like is placid beauty, mile upon mile of unchanging, undulating landscape. Personally I get bored by too much of the same shade of green - Scotland was so much better, dahlings. But what do I know -- my colleague was busy with his wretched handycam every minute of every journey.

Basel itself is more to my liking, a pretty little town with a quaint town centre right outside the train station. Here trams and little cars compete furiously for the same road space, occasionally missing each other by inches, and I can’t help imagining the bloodshed that would result if a couple of Delhi drivers were thrown into the mix.

Although we don’t have time to visit the old town, we see enough -- steep lanes, townhouses, medieval churches -- on our way to the exhibition to get a sense of a place with a history. Basel was established as a Celtic town in the first century BC and had become a prominent trading centre by the 13th century AD. Today, of course, it is best known for the world’s most high-profile watch and jewellery show, which is held here annually.

As it happens, much of what we learn about our surroundings comes from our FT contact Gareth, who has spent the last year here and whose disgruntled views contrast delightfully with the conventional wisdom. After he’s done with sardonic comments about the tall claims made by watch manufacturers (“yeah right, so years of R&D finally proved that the human wrist has a curve”), he turns to general observations about the country. “There’s no such thing as value-for-money food in this place,” he grumbles, minutes after we first meet, “and they don’t even have a decent cuisine of their own. Everything is borowed from somewhere else.” According to Gareth, the Swiss know how to mess up even something as simple as a pizza. “You’d think they would have learnt a trick or two, being so close to Italy. But no!”

However, the quality of food is the least of our problems. Poor Rakesh is vegetarian -- always a hazard in these parts, where waiters look at you in astonishment when they learn you don’t even eat fish -- so Gareth takes us to a salad joint in a nearby supermarket. “This country is obsessed with its underground parking lots,” he spleens, as the car pulls into one. “Nowhere else in the world will you find parking lots as clean -- spotlessly clean -- as here. I have a theory that they started digging big holes in the ground the minute Henry Ford announced assembly-line production.”

The days tick-tock by, and it’s only on the penultimate day of our stay that we get out of Pendulum Pit (as I’ve come to think of the watch fair) and manage some sightseeing. Gareth drives us to the Lavey-les-Bains spa resort, located in the mountains, 60 km from Lausanne. The drive is stunning: lovely weather, some of the finest views of the Alps -- and best of all, given the winding, stomach-churning hill roads back in India, the roads here are arrow-straight. Our guide explains that entire stretches of these highways have doubled up as runways for the army at times of war, because there is a paucity of space. “They always have to be prepared for war in these parts,” Gareth tells us. Wow, what a great country.

There’s something unreal about swimming in an open-air thermal pool -- complete with jacuzzi and air pressure massages -- halfway up the Swiss mountains when summer hasn’t yet set in, but it’s a very pleasant way to wind up this trip. The water is, of course, heated, but the surprising thing is that it isn’t as cold outside as one might think. In fact, on the whole the weather, even in March, hasn’t been anywhere near as chilly as everyone back home had warned it would be. The thick woollen sweaters I had meticulously packed have been cooling their sleeves in the hotel room through the duration of our stay.

As you might have guessed by now I wasn’t too taken with the country, though this was partly because ours wasn’t exactly a relaxed stay. And then, we didn’t get to visit several of the must-see places like Jungfrau or Lake Lucerne or the ridiculously named Mount Titlis. But even if Switzerland is overrated as a destination (and so expensive that your chocolate dreams will melt as soon as you get there) it is undeniably beautiful on its own manicured terms, and the weather, if you go at the right time of year, makes much else worthwhile. My advice, if you do decide to go there, is: don’t make it the focal point of your visit. Spend some time in the adjoining countries as well. Pass through.

(P.S. Welles and Lime got it wrong; the cuckoo clock is a German invention.)

---------------

[Incidentally my marketing colleague was all set to send copies of the magazine with the story to the Swiss Embassy and Swiss Tourism but I quietly asked him to read it before doing any such thing. Have not seen him since.]

Intelligent! Tripe! Entertaining!

Interesting account here by the film critic James Berardinelli of how a DVD cover carried the following blurb attributed to him: “A masterpiece worthy of admiration.” The film in question was Alexander, which Berardinelli hadn’t exactly been very enthusiastic about, and there was clearly some tampering by the publicists.

Berardinelli writes, in the Reelthoughts section of his website:

The point is that publicists will jump on any quote and use it as they see fit. A review could slam a movie with this phrase: "Words like 'intelligent' and 'entertaining' would never describe this film." An intrepid publicist might then use: "Intelligent! Entertaining!" I'm not one to overanalyze word choice to avoid the possibility of a quote being used to misrepresent how I feel about a film. There are always going to be less ethical publicists out there who will do this sort of thing. It can't be stopped because... well... I did write that. I may not have meant what they are indicating I meant, but I typed the words into my computer.

Isn’t it amazing the things publicists can do with word arrangements if they’re creative and unethical enough? This kind of thing happens quite frequently on the Hollywood circuit at least; I remember once reading about another critic who’d used the following sentence (or a close variant) in one of his reviews:

“It’s extraordinary to think that this tripe has been inspired by the great French film ____”

A few days later he espied this endorsement on the movie poster, just above his own name:

“...extraordinary...inspired...great...”

(Think I might have mentioned this in an earlier post too.)

Incidentally, Berardinelli also goes on to talk about plagiarism, about his fear that his online reviews could quite possibly be “passed off as high school assignments”. Plagiarise me, he says, and “I’ll go after you with bared fangs”. Hope our own movie reviewers are still listening ;-[)

Here’s the Reelthoughts link again; it’s the generic link, so you might have to scroll down to the May 16 entry.

New laptop, and elegy for my first computer

Have bought a laptop, finally. An IBM ThinkPad something-or-the-other. There was much agonising, much weighing of pros and cons, but eventually it made sense to invest in something for the future. The deciding factor was space: as anyone who’s seen my room will know I, don’t have much. Books occupy nearly half my bed with nowhere else to go, there’s a TV, a DVD player, a stereo system, a desktop and a cupboard packed right next to each other, and even the lizards and spiders that dwell in corners bump unhappily into things while moving about. So it’s good to have something I don’t necessarily have to create another table space for.

I’m also holding on to my nearly-10-year-old desktop comp for now. Didn’t make sense junking it because the exchange value offered was a paltry 5000 Rs, and I had spent nearly twice that much on my last upgrade just a couple of years ago. Plus there’s nothing really wrong with the machine: it’s served me well for nearly a decade, and there’s never been a major problem with it - which is brilliant considering I’ve got by without a UPS for all that time (anyone remember the voltage fluctuations we used to have in Delhi until a few years ago?)

But yes, the laptop will become my active computer now (have already transferred all my data to it) and the old PC will effectively be put out to pasture. Can’t help feeling a little strange about that. It’s silly, this attachment to mechanical things (especially considering how callous we are in our daily dealings with other human beings) but how does one disregard the memories associated with them? I got my PC in January 1996, at a time when I was - like many people - literally scared of Microsoft Windows; scared of moving beyond the monochrome world of DOS (which had itself been scary enough in my school days). I conquered my fear of the mouse on this machine. I tentatively bought CD-ROMs to run on it, played Cricket 97, marvelled at how much content the Cinemania and Great Books CDs had stored on them. I took my first steps towards discovering the Internet on it, learnt with some wonder that the Net was a virtual beast and the same websites could be accessed on different machines located in different physical spaces. One glorious day in late 1997, sitting at that very computer, I created my first email IDs on Hotmail and Yahoo; and a few days later I learnt, again to my wonder, that it was possible to open more than one Internet Explorer window simultaneously, and that I’d been wasting money by opening only one at a time.

During post-graduation I was one of the only students in my batch with a PC of my own, so friends would often stay over to make their Powerpoint Presentations on it. I saved pictures of friends and girlfriends on it, typed out random observations on books and films years before my first byline (and many years before I knew about blogging).

Then I started working and things changed. In the last 4-5 years, the home comp played a much less significant role in my life. With the exception of a year in between, I’ve generally had good computers and fast Net connections in the offices I’ve worked in, so the home PC would be switched on for maybe an hour or so on Saturdays and Sundays. I stopped bothering much about the painfully slow dial-up at home, or about updating my virus scan; most important things could be done in office anyway.

But from now on, a lot of important work will be done at home too. Next step is getting a decent Net connection. The laptop is still an unfamiliar animal but soon I’ll get used to it, the way I got used to Windows and emails and everything else. And every now and again, just for old time’s sake, I’ll switch my old desktop on and maybe play a music CD on it. One of the classics, "Do Not Forsake Me Oh my Darlin' " or something such.

Revenge of the Sith is nigh...

...and try, try, try as I might I can’t get the Anakin/Darth Vader theme out of my head. Ta da da-da, da da-da, da da-da (sorry, that’s almost as bad as my real-world humming).

Most of us agree that the last two Star Wars films (which is to say the first two, speaking chronologically) were shoddy and disappointing. But my own sentimental view is that anyone who threw in their lot with George Lucas’s grand vision at any point - even if only in childhood’s folly - has an obligation of sorts to see the series through to its end. (And no, I’m not one of those Star Wars freaks, though I’ll admit I very briefly considered naming this blog Jabba’s Hutt instead of Jabberwock. My fealty to the series extends to being fond of the first film [A New Hope, 1977], moderately enjoying Return of the Jedi...and regarding The Empire Strikes Back one of the greatest films ever made, right up there on my all-time top 20, sharing space with the Kurosawas and Hitchcocks.)

Now we have Revenge of the Sith, which will end the trilogy of prequels. Most SW freaks already refer to it as The One Where the Metamorphosis Takes Place: Anakin Skywalker will find himself transformed into that gigantic (metallic) insect, Darth Vader. And for most of us who’ve been following the story, therein lies the attraction (and the almost-certain disappointment) of this film.

As a youngster, just beginning to discover the tragic heroes of classical literature (Karna, Hector and so on) it was impossible not to see the romantic side of the Anakin/Vader story: great Jedi Knight is prophesised as being the Chosen One, destined to bring balance to the Force. But things go wrong, there is a fall, he becomes - shudder - Darth Vader (and this is a point that can’t be emphasized enough: however silly the insect-man in his glossy metal suit might seem to scoffers today, nearly all of us who watched the original trilogy as children were genuinely scared and awed by Vader at some point or the other). Years later, he is redeemed by his son, and the original prophecy does indeed come to pass.

I can’t deny that right into my late teens I was eagerly awaiting what Lucas would do with the back-story. And inevitably, like most others, I was disappointed. The chief problem is this: it’s undeniable that the Anakin Skywalker story has resonances of Shakespearean tragedy if written and treated in a certain way. “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them as we will” and all the rest of it. The problem is, the spirit of the Star Wars films doesn’t lend itself to such treatment. The original series defined itself as a space opera, with lots of wipes and dissolves, general cheesiness and deliberately hammy acting (Okay, so Mark Hamill was a mediocre actor anyway, but both Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher were better performers than one would think looking at those films). That’s the definition of the Star Wars ethos that persists to this day.

By comparison, Attack of the Clones, which dealt with the conflicts in the adolescent Anakin, was an uneven movie because it was over-conscious of its protagonist and what would eventually happen to him. I was in a tiny minority of viewers who thought Hayden Christensen’s performance as Anakin was very interesting - combining petulance and deep emotion in equal measure, along with all the confusions of adolescence, the burden of growing up too fast - but I’m still not sure that it was a performance which belonged in a Star Wars film. Eventually the character was left in limbo. It felt a bit like a serious, informed actor trying to portray a multi-dimensional character like Karna or Ashwatthama in a garish, superficially written, cardboard cutout version of the Mahabharata on TV. The format just couldn’t sustain the weight.

This is one reason why I’m such a fan of The Empire Strikes Back. That was one film which somehow found the perfect balance between a mass-appeal format and a stately, brooding story. I always think of it as the filmic equivalent of the best graphic novels - dark, mysterious, ponderous, but also entertaining and awe-inspiring. And I’d like to think Revenge of the Sith will be like that as well - that like Anakin, Lucas’s vision will be redeemed at last gasp - but I doubt it will.

P.S. Could be wrong. James Berardinelli’s review of Revenge of the Sith has just been published on his site, and while I’m sceptical about Berardinelli’s unalloyed enthusiasm for the series (he loved Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones), he makes some pretty hefty statements about the new film, e.g: “It has an emotional kick that no Star Wars film other than The Empire Strikes Back has achieved.” So let’s see.

MASH and the insanity of war

To see Robert Altman’s acerbic 1970 film M*A*S*H, about the goings on in a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital during the Korean War, is to be reminded of how different it was in tone to the famous TV series it inspired - a well-written, well-acted sitcom, but one that ran for 11 years (though the war itself lasted only three!) and inevitably lost much of its edge over that time. On the show, for instance, Alan Alda’s Captain Hawkeye regressed from being a lean ’n mean protagonist in the early years to an avuncular gent who managed to have a twinkle in his eye even for his long-time nemesis, Major O’Hoolihan (or "Hot Lips"). In the film on the other hand, Donald Sutherland’s Hawkeye is frozen for all time just as he appeared on screen for those 110 minutes - sneer permanently in place, ever ready with a wisecrack, genuinely cruel to the foolish idealists around him.

I’m not exactly knocking the TV M*A*S*H, I enjoyed it enormously when it was telecast here in the early years of the cable revolution. And any comparisons are bound to be unfair to the TV series, which never had the liberty to be as cruel, profane or hard-edged as the film version was. But given that the intention of the MASH script was to highlight the absurdity of war, it has to be said that only the film version makes the grade. Not the sitcom, which eventually turned into a long-running soap about a lot of likable people living together in many tents - and oh, by the way, there’s a war going on somewhere outside.

Few movies or books for that matter capture war’s insanity as well as Altman’s film, which is built on the friction between the hopelessly idealistic and the hopelessly cynical. One of the most remarkable things about the movie is that one never actually gets to see any fighting. This is war as theatre, set not on the killing fields but in the army operating rooms, where doctors have to deal with the messy aftermath. Where foolish, swaggering machismo is stripped away to reveal the blood and gore beneath, where bodies have to be stitched back together, organs put back in their right place. And where humour is the only way to deal with such horrors. ("Nurse, where’s the scalpel? Rright...scratch my nose please.")

Altman’s directorial style was well suited to the subject matter - the sudden zoom-ins and pull-outs and the overlapping dialogue all contributed to creating chaos out of order. The savagery with which this film lampoons the self-righteousness and gungho-ism that accompany armed conflict has rarely been matched. From the start, M*A*S*H is firmly on the side of the irreverent characters - Hawkeye, Trapper John, Duke Forrest - and never misses a chance to poke fun at the sanctimonious (read: hypocritical). When the Bible-toting Frank Burns (played by a young Robert Duvall) teaches a Korean lad to read from the Old Testament (in a scene that has proselytising implications), Duke Forrest hands the boy a porn magazine ("lots of pictures. Pictures good"). The implicit question is: in the madness and inhumanity of this setting, does the Holy Book really count for more than a skin mag? The question rears its head again a little later, when Burns and the equally lofty-minded Hot Lips succumb to their lust in her tent: they can’t even have consensual sex without justifying it as a divine act ("God wants us to be together; His will be done.")

Watching this film makes you wonder how the horrors of war can possibly be presented as anything but a comedy of the absurd. The question is pointless because there have been great war films in the drama genre, films that are austere and introspective, occasionally even - let’s face it - thrilling. For every M*A*S*H there’s a Paths of Glory, just as for every Catch-22 there’s a Naked and the Dead. But at their best, movies like M*A*S*H allow us to see that war is in its essence one big comedy - as rich in farce and slapstick as anything the greatest funny men could have dreamt up, and a mirror of the human condition unlike any other.

‘And thou shalt build a great boat, yea...’

The story of Noah and the ark is so rich with dramatic possibility, it’s a wonder that it hasn’t already inspired a deluge of fiction. The content would put the schmaltziest Bollywood movie to shame. There’s a man who hears voices in his head, there’s an angry and vengeful God, there’s a bickering family (and no one bickers like they do in the Bible), there’s loads of sex (including between a 600-year-old man and a 14-year-old girl if you like age-difference romances), there’s a global catastrophe that outdoes all of Hollywood’s terrible disaster movies, there are thousands of shrieking, drowning people, there are pairs of grinning lions and panthers and snakes and slugs. This is blockbuster material. Titanic was a dinghy compared to this.

So why haven’t more fiction writers found inspiration in the story? One notable example was of course the brilliant first chapter of Julian Barnes’ A History of the World in Ten and a Half Chapters, a very irreverent account of the catastrophe as seen through the eyes of a stowaway woodworm. Right from its opening lines ("They put the behemoths in the hold along with the rhinos, the hippos and the elephants. It was a sensible decision to use them as ballast, but you can imagine the stench"), Barnes’s story never lets up once, dealing with such controversial subjects as: What kind of a man was Noah, really? (Answer: not a very nice man.) What did the family eat during their long years of confinement? (Do you really want to know?) What was one of the women up to with one of the more intelligent male chimpanzees? Were the species that made it off the ark really all there was of Creation before the Flood? Why were the poor lemmings traumatised for all time? And why did the raven get such bad press while the devious dove was destined for special status on postage stamps?

Now we have David Maine’s debut novel The Flood which, while nowhere near as good as the Barnes story, makes a brave stab at weaving new wool out of the Noah legend. Maine tells the story through the perspectives of various members of Noah’s family: the cantankerous old man himself, all bluster and hidebound beliefs; his near-anonymous, nameless wife; their sons Sem, Cham and Japheth; their wives Bera, Ilya and Mirn. The novel opens with daughters-in-law being sent off to distant lands to gather species. Sons goof off, wondering what all the fuss is about. Building the ark is difficult, especially since the people who are to be left behind don’t have much incentive to help out. As the Day of Judgement draws near, there is much debating about how the animals ought to be packed in. Tempers rise. Then the waters follow suit.

Strewn in with the funny bits are frequent speculations on the randomness of life; there is a poignant moment when Noah’s daughter-in-law Ilya watches the people drowning outside and thinks about the set of circumstances that led her to become part of this family: “Change any of those circumstances and I’m not on this boat. I’m down there in the crowd, pleading, Don’t leave me here to die.”

The Flood is rarely uninteresting, though it plods slightly in the final chapters. However, at times Maine seems undecided between writing an out-and-out entertainer and making deep observations on faith and family ties. This splits the book down the middle: on the one hand it isn’t as funny or irreverent as it could have been but on the other hand it doesn’t do much justice to the more serious topics. I thought the author copped out in the end.

Still, it’s entertaining and fast-paced, and for me personally speaking it was also the kind of book I don’t get to read much these days - the kind that comes to you unencumbered by hype and blurbs. When you’re not a full-time reviewer and have to ration your reading, it gets difficult to escape the Big Books, the “important releases”. Those usually jostle for space with my favourite writers or the older books on my reading list. So this was a good change, though I won’t be queueing up for the sequel.

TOI springs a surprise on Ash

I try to be nice when it comes to the Times of India but I never try too hard. So mustn’t let their latest hilarious goof-up pass without a mention. Here are links from Sepia Mutiny and Great Bong about how a TOI reporter picked up a satirical piece from The Spoof about Aishwarya Rai wrestling a 380-pound woman on the Jerry Springer show, and then carried it as straight news.

Love this bit, where TOI first quotes from the website and then elucidates the point for its presumably dumb readers:

"He promised me that no one would try and kiss me or rip off my clothes. I am still a bit confused about why I need bodyguards on his show, but I guess it will all work out OK. I hope so... my mother in India will be watching on the satellite!"

Knowing Ash’s conservative nature, she has been promised that no one will touch her unduly or kiss her or try to rip off her clothes.

Also, given the enormity of the goof, isn’t it funny the way the actress is referred to informally as "Ash" throughout the TOI article? As in: to the rest of the world she might be the cool, elusive beauty, but to us she's Ash, we're on back-slapping terms with her. Slap away, TOI, slap away.

Original Spoof article here, TOI version here.

Double Talk: more Indian comics please!

One of the most enjoyable things I read this weekend was Manjula Padmanabhan’s Double Talk, a collection of some of the comic strips that appeared under the same name in the Sunday Observer, Bombay, between 1982 and 1986. The strips were built around the character of Suki, a free-thinking, 20-something young woman, who, as her creator puts it, “started life as an alter-ego but soon developed a persona of her own”.

One tends to be patronising about the (lack of) with-it-ness of previous generations, about how we’re so much more clued in today than people were earlier. Which is why I was surprised to find that a comic strip like this was possible in the early 1980s; “Double Talk” is wryly irreverent (and consequently insightful) about topics like work, feminism, atheism, vegetarianism and political correctness in general, and it’s easy to see why it generated so much hate-mail (the book’s back cover includes a collage of the letters to the editor, variously accusing Padmanabhan of self-indulgence, swollen-headedness and a good many other things).

While the collection tapers off towards the end - some annoying characters, like a lovesick frog and an extraterrestrial get too much space for my liking - it’s still great fun on the whole. I also liked what the author says in her Introduction:

“Unless local strips are actively critiqued and appraised by their readers, local cartoonists will remain minor curiosities, never becoming the pop-sociologists that the best international strip cartoonists are. More than anything else, cartoonists need engaged and intelligent readers.”

It is a bit strange, this lack of quality indigenous comic strips, especially considering the large fan following here of international strips like “Calvin & Hobbes”, “Dilbert” and “Non Sequitur”. Quite likely it’s because this country has so many sacred cows that talented writer-illustrators prefer to stifle their creativity rather than risk getting into trouble with the moral police. And of course, I’m not sure how much encouragement would be forthcoming from the editors of mainstream newspapers anyway.

A final word of endorsement: Double Talk took me less than 30 minutes to get through (though of course it will be reread soon, as all good comics should be). That isn’t the best thing about the book, but it’s a major bonus where I’m concerned.

P.S. Manjula Padmanabhan’s blog is here.

Fellini’s Rosebud: ‘Asa Nisi Masa'

Increasingly, as I find myself without the time (or patience) to watch whole films on DVD, I take 15-20 minutes out to re-discover key scenes from some of my favourite movies. (Further note to the DVD vs VCD debate: this isn’t half as convenient when you don’t have scene access.) It’s surprising how rewarding some scenes can be when viewed in isolation.

One of my recent DVD acquisitions is Federico Fellini’s beautiful 1963 film 8 1/2, a partly autobiographical story about a film director, Guido (played by Marcello Mastroianni) beleaguered by all sorts of distractions (hangers on, commercial dictates, the demanding women in his life) as he tries to maintain his artistic integrity and complete his new film. 8 1/2 has a gallery of great images and scenes, notably the nightmare sequence that opens the movie - Guido frees himself from his car during a claustrophobic traffic jam, flies off into the sky a free bird, and is then pulled down to earth by a press agent and a producer: a lofty-minded artist literally being tethered by mundane considerations.

There’s much else through the lengthof the film, where Guido’s present repeatedly merges with his childhood memories - the use of bold, deliberately exaggerated images convey the effect of his Catholic upbringing on his life, for instance. But my single favourite scene, the one that made the most lasting impression on me when I first saw the film years ago, involves the strange incantation “Asa Nisi Masa”. Around 40 minutes into the story, at a vulgar filmi party, a magician presents a lady with clairvoyant powers and demonstrates her ability to read the thoughts of people. Guido is sceptical but agrees good-naturedly to be put to this mind test. The lady studies him and then writes the words “ASA NISI MASA” on a slate. The magician asks Guido if she’s got it right and Guido, a contemplative half-smile on his face, says a quick “Si” (Yes) and turns away. “But what does it mean?” asks the magician, and Fellini cuts to a brief flashback of Guido’s childhood. “Asa Nisi Masa” is revealed to be a chant the children would utter after being tucked into their beds, a chant with the supposed power to make the eyes of a wall-portrait “come to life”.

The audio commentary (by Fellini’s friend and collaborator Gideon Bachmann) on the DVD helped elucidate the “Asa Nisi Masa” scene for me. On one obvious level, the scene points to a talent the adult Guido believes is rapidly getting away from him: this acclaimed director fears he is losing the art of “making pictures move”. (Fellini himself was in a similar crisis of confidence when making this film.) But there was also a nice bit of trivia about the origin of the strange phrase. The commentary tells us that as a child Fellini and his friends would often create code languages by adding a syllable or two to a sequence of actual words (this game is familiar to many of us as well). “Asa Nisi Masa” was probably formed by adding “sa”, “si” and “sa” to the sounds “aa”, “ni” and “ma” respectively. The word “anima” means soul or life-force and it also carries associations with repressed female characteristics in men, something that’s very relevant to 8 1/2, where the many women in Guido’s life, past and present, continually dominate his thoughts and actions.

Explanations do sometimes take the charm out of these things. Long before I found these analyses, I thought of the “Asa Nisi Masa” scene as a poignant childhood revisitation, a symbol of innocence lost. It made me think of two things: one, Proust’s use of a biscuit (the Madeleine) to evoke memories of an irretrievably lost childhood (somehow, Bourbon biscuits have the same effect on me, making me think of rainy afternoons spent in Bombay in my childhood, peeling away the cream while surreptitiously trying to stick the rest of the biscuit back into the packet); and two, the use of the word “Rosebud” in Citizen Kane as the possible key to Charles Foster Kane’s life.

When he’s working at full steam, Fellini is one of the very few directors with the ability to highlight the areas where cinema has an advantage over literature: the way it provides us a direct, unobstructed view of the connections between images and motifs. 8 1/2, with its many depictions of the links between a man’s past and present, has some of the most powerful images of any film I’ve seen. One of the reasons I wanted to write about it was that a friend looking for DVD suggestions recently asked me if he should include it on his list. Well, I can’t recommend it highly enough.

P.S. Roger Ebert’s review of 8 1/2 is here.

Road research

My faith in the vileness of human nature has been shaken. Unbeknownst to all but a few, I’ve been conducting a personal little experiment while driving from home to office and back, and the results threaten to sway the foundations of my cynicism.

Ever since I began driving I’ve been fascinated by the horniness of Delhi’s drivers. I’ve written edits about it in the tabloid I once worked for, I’ve blubbered about it to friends, I even posted a blog once suggesting that disabling the car horn is the perfect way to cause a nervous breakdown in an average Delhi driver. Well, what I’ve been doing the past three or four days is: each time the vehicle behind me goes into frenetic tooting mode, I slow my car down a bit (or take my own sweet time to move if a red light has just turned green) and give the driver a purposeful and lingering look through my rear-view mirror (just long enough so that the point is made, even if he can’t see my expression), while simultaneously making a flamboyant “what ho, dude?” gesture with my right hand.

The results so far have been shocking and indicate that all is not yet known about the human animal. All this while we’ve been told that Delhi drivers have not a vestige of shame or civility left in them. We hear stories of road rage, of the tiniest sparks creating vast flares of antagonism. And yet, of the 37 drivers unwittingly polled in my experiment, as many as 27 - a mind-blowing 72.9 per cent - did nothing more than avert their eyes and look sheepish when faced with the knowledge that someone had been offended by their honking. The impression I got was that using the horn is so much a part of their mental make-up that they just do it mechanically, without realising it might be insulting to other people. They’re honking not at sentient, sensitive human beings but at moving cuboids of metal. And when presented with a human face, they cower down.

That’s the 27, anyway. Of the remaining 10, the break-up was roughly this (it’s difficult to keep taking notes on a busy road when you’ve also been provoking the driver behind you):

- Three looked right back at me and mimicked my hand gesture while their eyebrows rose and fell at a surprisingly speedy rate. I’ll be called regionalist for this, but I suspect they were Bengali.

- Four kept up the furious honking while gazing intently at the back of my car, altogether failing to notice what I was doing.

- Two threw their hands up violently, glared and muttered (or lip synched) imprecations involving mothers and sisters.

- And only one actually got worked up enough to open his car door slightly and indicate he was coming across to have a word with me (but luckily the lights had just changed)

So, does my modest, unscientific research prove that people are basically nice when you really get to know them, like Atticus Finch said? I hope not, but some of my hidebound beliefs have developed cracks and will need serious repair work. Meanwhile, the research will continue: next in line is an experiment that includes manouevring my car in such ways that the buses around me will find themselves unable to shift lanes suddenly. If I live expect a blog about it soon.

(P.S. No earnest corrective comments please about the use of the word "horniness")

Watch words

Just wrote the following for a story. Oh ask not, prithee ask not what it all means:

- The quality of all parts and components of the movement, including those used for auxiliary mechanisms, must comply with the standards prescribed by the Office for the optical inspection of Genevan watches.

- Steel parts must display polished angles and their sides parallel file strokes, their visible faces must be smoothed and polished, screw heads must be polished or circular-grained and their rim and slot bevelled.

- The balance spring must be secured by a sliding stud cap with round head and neck. Mobile stud-holders are accepted.

- On the bridge side, jewels must be semi-mirror polished and their sinks polished. A centre-wheel jewel in the mainplate is not required.

- Fitted or split indexes (regulators) with a fastening system are accepted, save on extra-thin movements where the system is not mandatory.

Now you tell me, HOW am I supposed to bring a writer’s touch to this manner of journalism?

Journalism vs writing

Chandrahas Choudhury, who’s all but usurped The Middle Stage from Amit Varma, wrote this post recently about Joseph Mitchell’s pieces for the New Yorker, essays that combined good reportage with high-quality writing. It makes me want to get back to a subject I’ve long considered blogging about but have repeatedly put off: good journalism vs good writing, the ways in which the two can overlap and how, so often, they have absolutely nothing to do with each other but are still thought of as the same thing.

There are so many different aspects to this debate, it’s difficult to know where to begin and how to end. But it keeps coming up in one form or the other - from having to read the poorly written, indifferently subbed copy on the front pages of most newspapers, to conversations with journo colleagues who fancy themselves as writers (and talk about “my style”) when they can barely string one gramatically correct sentence together, to discussions with bemused friends who have been exposed to much higher standards of feature writing in other countries (sorry if that sounds snobbish but there it is) and can’t understand why articles have to be completely rewritten by the desk out here.

First, a personal aside so I can try to sift my own prejudices from more general observations. I’ve had a very ambivalent relationship with the profession I’m in, one that’s often bordered on condescension towards it. This is partly because the standards of writing and reportage are both so low (especially in features, and especially in Delhi) that for someone with writerly aspirations it’s easy to think of reporting as a job that merely involves collecting information and putting it together, while not worrying about things like language or style. It’s partly also because of my own strange career trajectory - technically speaking I’ve been in business journalism for over two years now, without ever considering myself a business journalist. I tend to be a little streamlined in my interests and what’s happening in the corporate world doesn’t usually figure among those.

In the last few months things have been good. I’ve been handling the books section of my paper as an add-on, and even my more regular work - on our weekend features supplement - has become more interesting because the supplement has been revamped to make it lighter, less corporate and more lifestyle-ish. Much more space now for profiles on interesting people, film and music, etc.

But for over a year before that I was doing a lot of stuff I just wasn’t interested in - industry stories on shoes and tiles and such, and during those months I thought of myself as a hack journo. I would do these half-hearted interviews, collect little chunks of info, create separate, unstructured paragraphs out of them and then find a lazy linking device between paras that would turn the whole mess into a 1200-word “feature story”. (Also, when writing about a topic I’m not all that clued in to, I don’t want to be over-clever and risk putting foot in mouth, I’d much rather just get the facts down as efficiently as possible.) So the best that could be said about the writing on these pieces was that there were no typos. And when the editor rewrote something, or even gave the story a whole new intro I didn’t care a whit. This wasn’t my writing after all, it was my reporting. I got the byline not for stylish turn of phrase but because of the work I had done in collecting and assembling information. (Meanwhile, just to ensure I didn’t die of boredom or something I would do the occasional book or film review on the side.)

Anyway, that’s my story - and like I said, things have now changed for the better. In some of the more interesting people profiles I’ve done lately, I’ve felt the satisfaction of combining information with a fluid, personal writing style; I’ve actually enjoyed writing the story. Which is of course how it should be in a perfect world.

But Indian journalism, generally speaking, is not that perfect world. One of the reasons is that English isn’t the first language (or sometimes even the second language) for many of the people working as reporters in English-language newspapers and magazines. Many news reporters in particular get where they are by dint of hard work and a talent for digging out stories and wheedling information out of people. Those talents are the first requirements for their job and fluency in the language comes a very distant second. Some of the finest, most efficient reporters I’ve worked with have been people who could barely even speak English. The good thing was, they knew it and didn’t have any ego hassles about the desk rewriting their copy. They understood their limitations and, in the best-case scenarios, there was even a covert understanding that they would file their copies early so the desk would have more time to structure the language.

When it works that way, fine. The problem arises when some people refuse to accept that their writing is awkward or ungrammatical, and start interfering with what the desk is up to. It’s mind-boggling the number of such people there are, the ones who go on about their “style of writing” and who are encouraged in these delusions by equally clueless friends and relatives. (This is especially annoying because back in the days when I was doing clinical reportage-oriented articles, I would baulk and snap if a family member - or a PR person - said “what a well-written story”.) And when one of these sorts makes it to a relatively senior level, from where they can be hegemonist with deskies, well, that’s a recipe for trouble. It helps explain the level of copy-editing in most of our newspapers.

One valid argument is that while writing skills needn’t be a priority for reporters working in news, they are important for feature writers. Sometimes it does work that way: talented writers looking at a career in journalism more often than not gravitate towards features. But the lines do keep blurring; after all, it’s not like news reporters are recruited straight out of one gene pool while feature writers are drawn from another gene pool with superior writing skills, and then the two are kept separately in airtight compartments. There’s a lot of movement in journalism, job profiles keep changing and shifts often occur from one department to another.

Like I said earlier, this post doesn’t have a definite beginning or end, there’s plenty more one can say on the subject and I might keep adding to it as and when I feel like. Meanwhile, I can only hope there are even a few people in the profession with the inclination and skill to take up Chandrahas’s suggestion for contemplative essays on ice-cream selles, or stray dogs, or autorickshawdrivers.

Samit Basu picked up a used toothpick!!...

...at a Penguin launch last evening, which goes to show that precocious young writers are not as omniscient as we think. They create entire fictional universes in their heads but they don’t always realise that in the real world toothpicks mustn’t be lifted off ashtrays. Yesterday Samit and I were annoying Penguin CEO Thomas Abraham with Sandman talk when a tray-bearing waiter passed within grabbing distance. So what does our young duck of destiny do? He reaches for the nearest toothpick whereupon the waiter screams, "No sirrr! That’s dirty!" Samit straightens himself, puts on his most dignified expression and slurs, "I see. Now that wouldn’t have been a good idea, would it?" (Did I mention he was already quite high before coming to the launch?) And then, after airlifting the snack item in a more conventional fashion, he discovers it’s a vegetarian thingabob. Bad night for our young scribe.

The waiter sauntered off, probably wondering if there was any mention of common sense in all the thick books these lit-types loudly read out to each other at such events. The whole episode reminded me for some reason of the story about Aristotle falling into the gutter and the old lady who helped him out rolling her eyes, saying "Here is a man who would study the stars but sees not what lies at his feet" (they talked funny back then). Of course, the analogy does no justice to either Aristotle or the waiter.

Not much else to say about the event, except to mention the senior promotions lady who wagged her finger at me sternly and said, "First you promise you won’t blog, then you blog even more prodigiously. What is all this?" To her I dedicate this post.

Siddhartha Deb and a new heart of darkness

Reading Siddhartha Deb’s Surface, I felt the rare thrill of seeing a talented writer working closely with the template of a revered book that’s more than 100 years old, and still managing to bring something new to it - reworking its themes and ideas in a different setting. The older novel shifting beneath the translucent surface of Deb’s book is Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and more than once while reading Surface I was tempted to stop midway and give the Conrad a quick re-read. But Deb’s novel was gripping enough in itself to stop me from acting on that temptation.

In Surface a mercenary journalist, Amrit Singh, working half-heartedly for a Calcutta newspaper, travels to the north-east mainly to investigate a photograph that points to the possible killing of a porn actress by insurgents. But Amrit becomes intrigued, and then obsessed, by the talk he hears of an "alternative community" known as the Prosperity Project, located somewhere in the heart of this wilderness, and run by a visionary named Malik: "A creator of order in the wilderness. A messenger of hope for an area plunged in darkness." Everything in the novel now starts to converge towards this mythic figure, and Amrit’s journey increasingly starts to resemble the journey of Conrad’s protagonist Marlow, travelling through the African jungle in search of the enigmatic ivory trader Kurtz.

In Conrad’s novel, Marlow’s journey ends with an understanding of how a once-great man was corrupted by forces beyond his comprehension; of civilisation destroyed by the cruelty inherent in nature. In Surface, we eventually learn less about Malik and the forces that might have made and unmade him. But the similarities between Conrad’s Kurtz and Deb’s Malik are startling: from the words used by admirers to describe the two men - "remarkable", "extraordinary", "genius" - to the presence of a woman who never loses faith in the fallen figure despite all evidence to the contrary. And, in what is a telling nod to the earlier book, Deb even uses the line "Mr Malik. He’s dead" - an echo of one of literature’s most famous four-worders: "Mistah Kurtz. He dead", which is associated not only with Conrad but also T S Eliot, who used it as the epigraph for his poem "The Hollow Men".

I wasn’t all that surprised by the Conrad influence on Siddhartha Deb’s book. I’d interviewed Deb around three years ago when his first novel The Point of Return was being launched, and while the interview wasn’t a huge success (I was a bit of a greenhorn then and my questions were maybe a couple of rungs further up the Sensibility Ladder than "How do you get the idea to write a novel?") one of the things I gathered was that Deb was a big admirer of Conrad (and Faulkner, Melville and W G Sebald among others). And I remember noting with interest that his email ID had the domain name secretsharer.net ("The Secret Sharer" being a Conrad story).

Heart of Darkness was written around 1900 and published a couple of years later. So much has happened in the intervening hundred years; the world has opened up so much more than it had in several centuries previous, and it’s easy to be deluded into thinking we now know everything there is to know about the planet - that no region is inaccessible, that there are no dark places left. But as recent fiction has shown, that’s far from true. A few months ago we had Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide shedding light on the Sunderbans, a region so little is known of. Surface is another important reminder, one that also fills an important gap: that of quality fiction set in the pockets of darkness in northeast India.

Update: and here's the published review. Lots of overlapping, naturally.

And this also has been one of the dark places of the earth.
- Marlow, speaking on the banks of the river Thames, in the opening pages of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1902)

The ghost of a 100-year-old novella shifts beneath the surface of Siddhartha Deb's new book, which is why it's remarkable that Surface is itself such a fresh read. For his story, which takes us into the farthest reaches of northeast India -- a region most of the rest of the country knows so little about -- Deb draws from the template of Conrad's Heart of Darkness, an allegory of civilisation overcome by the cold barbarity present in nature. But Deb's style is so direct and eloquent that his story is never less than gripping on its own terms.

As the novel opens, the narrator Amrit Singh, a discontented journalist, is being sent to "the region" on a minor assignment. Amrit works for The Sentinel, a Calcutta newspaper with an editor named Sarkar (all of which will be of interest if you're looking for real-life parallels). But he's jaded and trying for a last shot at escaping the squalor around him. An accidentally discovered photograph, which points to the possible killing of a porn actress by insurgents "to impress upon the people the importance of desisting from corrupt activities encouraged by Indian imperialism", begins to seem like Amrit's ticket to a better life; he makes it his agenda to find out the story behind the image and sell it to a foreign magazine.

As Amrit's journey takes him deeper into unknown terrain, he hears tales of corruption and hopelessness, sees signs of decay (a glass atrium left unfinished, cracked and broken highways). But soon a sliver of light seems to appear: Amrit becomes intrigued by talk of an "alternative community" known as the Prosperity Project, located somewhere in the heart of this forbidding place, and run by a visionary named Malik, described as "a creator of order in the wilderness" and "a messenger of hope for an area plunged in darkness". Soon everything in the novel starts to converge towards this mythic figure, and Amrit's journey increasingly starts to resemble the journey of Conrad's protagonist Marlow, travelling through the African jungle in search of the enigmatic ivory trader Kurtz.

In Conrad's novel, Marlow's journey ends with the apocalyptic revelation of how a once-great man was corrupted by forces beyond his comprehension; of civilisation destroyed by the cruelty inherent in nature. In Surface, the journey is a little more important than the destination; the ending is more unresolved, we never learn too much about Malik and the forces that make him tick, only enough to see that surface appearances are deceptive. But the similarities between Conrad's Kurtz and Deb's Malik are striking nonetheless: from the words used by admirers to describe the two men -- "remarkable", "extraordinary", "genius" -- to the presence of a woman who never loses faith in the fallen figure despite all evidence to the contrary. And, in what is a telling nod to the earlier book, Deb even uses a line that directly references one of literature's most famous four-worders: "Mistah Kurtz. He dead".

The connections are enough to suggest that like Conrad, Deb is indicating the foolishness of expecting the rules of civilisation to apply to a place that is frozen in time. In fact, despite the ostensible realism of his narrative, Deb leaves little hints to suggest that his protagonist has entered an almost unreal place. At one point, Amrit is mistaken for a soldier named Rajinder, and a little later he finds himself sitting with a group of people discussing the same soldier's tragic story. At another point Amrit has Malik's visiting wife as a travelling companion, and no explicit comment is made on this coincidence. Malik's status as a larger-than-life figure is repeatedly emphasised, as in his wife's unsettling description of how they first met.

Many passages have a strongly cinematic feel to them, notably an intense account by a man Amrit meets early on of a dream he had. Even a brief early scene set in a cemetery where a murdered lieutenant is being cremated has an element of theatre about it; at various times during the narrative it feels like a hidden stage will collapse and everything will be revealed as a nightmare.

Surface is set sometime in the early 1990s -- an important detail, since a world without the Internet, or even computers, adds to the sense of the protagonist being cut off from the civilised world. Or perhaps it wouldn't have mattered, for the region most of the story is set in seems unyielding anyway -- impervious to the changes wrought by technology. In his short career as a novelist, Deb has shown interest in places without definite markings or borders (his first book, The Point of Return, had as its epigraph the Herman Melville quote "It is not set down in any map; true places never are"). Within India, he couldn't have chosen a much better region to set his story in. Like Amitav Ghosh's The Hungry Tide, published a few months ago, Deb's book is a reminder that dark places do still exist, even in a world that seems so shrunk by technology that it's easy to imagine there are no hidden corners left.

Surface sometimes reads like reportage, like travel writing shedding bits of light on an untraversed region. But it is, first and foremost, an engrossing novel that fills an important gap: that of quality fiction set in the pockets of darkness in northeast India.

Sherry says

Came in to office on Monday morning, leafed through the newspapers and practically the first thing I saw was this quote from Navjot Singh 'Sherry' Sidhu in The Hindu:

“I hate the word comedian. Call me witty, I love it.”

Ya, that’s funny all right.

Pink Floyd in Pompeii

If I were allowed to take just 5 of my DVDs to an 8ft x 8ft prison cell, Pink Floyd at Pompeii would almost certainly make it to the list. This is a stunning concert film, made at a very interesting stage in The Floyd’s evolution: they’d moved beyond the geeky-youngsters-performing-psychedelic-shows-in-London-nightbars phase and they hadn’t yet started producing the Big Albums, the ones most casual fans associate them with today. Syd Barrett, their charismatic first frontman, had been phased out of the band a couple of years earlier; The Dark Side of the Moon was yet a couple of years away. Floyd were on the cusp when they performed amid Pompeii’s eerie ancient ruins back in 1971.

I tend to regard this as the point where they reached their creative apotheosis as a rock band, with the albums Meddle and Atom Heart Mother. Many of my friends disagree. (My own 20-year-old self is firmly on their side, chastising me from the distant past; back then, I went through extended periods when I was convinced that, first The Wall, then Animals and then Wish You Were Here, were the best things to have happened to rock music.)

Floyd has gone through several face-lifts, as you’d expect from most rock bands that lasted more than 30 years. (Have they even officially disbanded yet? Or do they still exist in some vague, orchestra-dominated avatar, with Dave Gilmour’s grandchildren performing on trumpets in the chorus?) It’s almost impossible to relate the nerdy young architecture students of 1965 with the silver-haired multimillionaires who performed with hordes of back-up artistes in the 1990s. But lately I’ve felt a proclivity for their early work; it feels so much purer than anything they subsequently did.

The Pompeii concert is bookended by the first and second halves of the 23-minutes "Echoes", a song that provided me with one of my earliest memories of how evocative rock lyrics could be:

“Overhead the albatross hangs motionless upon the air
And deep beneath the rolling waves
In labyrinths of coral caves
The echo of a distant tide
Comes willowing across the sand
And everything is green and submarine

And no one showed us to the land
And no one knows the wheres or whys
But something stirs and something tries
And starts to climb toward the light.”

This section – with the gentle voices of Gilmour and Richard Wright intercut with visuals of fading statues that recall Shelley’s "Ozymandias" - is probably my joint favourite, along with the breathtaking, adrenaline-pumping filmisation of that great number "One of these Days" built around Nick Mason’s frenetic drumming.

Pompeii shows a vibrant, youthful side to Pink Floyd that few of us would have seen, what with the limited (and impersonal) concert footage generally available. It shows a group of four young musicians who weren’t afraid to risk looking silly in pursuit of their – what’s that word? – art. (And they do look very silly at times: don’t miss the hopeless attempts at improvisation on the "Saucerful of Secrets" track – Waters banging away at a large gong, like an LSD-addled version of the Rank Films mascot; Gilmour determinedly running a thimble up and down his guitar chords; and most embarrassing, the usually dignified Wright trying to create free-flowing sound by crawling about his piano keys. But I still prefer all this to the soulless flamboyance of their later concerts, filled with spectacular light displays and flying-pig gimmickry.)

This is not to suggest that Pompeii is an out-and-out exercise in minimalism or spontaneity. It isn’t; it’s a carefully planned, filmed and edited concert, and some of the stuff on the remastered version – the "special visual effects" including an animation of a volcanic eruption - is positively garish. But it’s still closer to honest, direct rock ’n roll than almost anything the Floyd later did.

P.S. It would have been interesting to see how the Pompeii concert might have turned out if Syd Barrett had still been fronting Pink Floyd at the time. While Barrett’s reputation as a mad genius is probably overstated, he was undoubtedly one of the most interesting figures in rock music; whatever heights Floyd subsequently achieved, they certainly never again had as dynamic a personality in their ranks (with respect to the considerable achievements of Waters and Gilmour). The Barrett hypothesis remains one of the biggest what ifs in rock history: what direction would Floyd have taken if he had stayed…well, not sane exactly, but just sane enough to have led the band for another six to eight years even? The demands we alternate historians make!

At any rate, Barrett’s ghost continued to loom behind whatever Floyd did over the next decade or so. Waters became the band’s central figure, but he never quite seemed to come to terms with the guilt over "leaving old Syd behind". Consider those chillingly prescient, schizophrenic lines: "And if the band you’re in starts playing different tunes/ I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon. The words were written by Waters but they can be read as a warning by Barrett to Waters: what happened to me could happen to you too. And it did. Waters left in 1982 following differences over the direction the band was moving in, and despite my admiration for Gilmour’s voice and his guitar-playing I’ve never been able to work up much interest in the later albums. Oh, I’m sure Momentary Lapse of Reason, Delicate Sound of Thunder etc are very good in their own right, but I can only shake my head sadly at friends who call them Pink Floyd albums. By the late 1980s "Floyd" had moved so far away from what it had once been, it didn’t even seem worth complaining about.

The Pompeii concert is a valuable glimpse at what might have been. Most important, it’s a rocking good DVD, so stop reading this and go out and buy it now.