Scanning Mike Marqusee’s bibliography at the Oxford Book Store, where the launch of the updated version of his book Chimes of Freedom: Bob Dylan in the Sixties was being held, I realised what it was about the author that most appeals to me. Look at the titles on his resume and you won’t find an overriding theme, or a consistency of subject; instead, the impression you’ll get is that of someone who just sits down and writes books about various, completely unrelated things - the only link being that they’re things he’s passionate about and wants to write about. How many other people do you know who have, in a relatively short writing career, published a range of titles this varied: 1) a study of Bob Dylan’s work in the context of the socio-cultural movements of the 1960s; 2) a biography of Muhammad Ali, again with the 1960s as the background (Redemption Song); 3) a political title (Defeat From the Jaws of Victory: Inside Kinnock’s Labour Party) and 4) three completely different types of cricket books: a thriller, a critical study of the ills afflicting English cricket and an account of the 1996 World Cup on the subcontinent.
I can imagine the man calling up his editor and saying, “Look, I have this sudden urge to write a book about so-and-so or such-and-such, so I’ll just dust off the keyboard and get started, and meanwhile you can send the advance to the usual address.” It must be fun to be Mike Marqusee.
My personal interest in attending the launch came from sharing two of Marqusee’s passions: Dylan and cricket. The event itself was more fun than these things usually are: the book discussion was forced and wearisome at times - with a little more pontificating than was strictly necessary on topics like American radicalism, the political Right and the political Left - but Marqusee himself never struck the wrong note. When he took the floor, voice booming (he didn’t need a microphone and was proud of it; “one Mike is enough”), his enthusiasm for his subject came across in every sentence. Speaking in an authoritative tone that still managed to be pleasant and conversational, he held forth on the complexity of Dylan’s art, its continuing relevance today (“the targets he attacked are still with us”), the misappropriation of his songs by groups with their own agenda and the irony that he is still remembered foremost as a protest singer despite having turned his back on the form 40 years ago.
He moved between topics as diverse as the unfortunate culture of “national boosterism” in modern India, analogous to the US in the 1960s (“you’re getting obsessed with being greater than China, with being a nuclear power and so on”); the messiness and contradictions inherent in history, something that Dylan’s works are continual reminders of; and how the singer-songwriter always frustrated attempts to read meaning into his works (He once told Joan Baez , just to annoy her, that he wrote “Masters of War” only for the money) - “but then, as D H Lawrence said, ‘Don’t trust the teller, trust the tale’.”
Marqusee also recited, practically sang, verses from Dylan’s songs, giving them inflections that highlighted their meanings -- a far cry from many sanctimoniously dry readings that attempt to give Dylan literary “respectability” by dissociating his poetry from his music. Which is why it was fitting that the evening ended, as it began, not with a barrage of high-sounding words but with a musical performance that captured the essence of the subject better than any discussion could; as a hushed audience listened appreciatively, a young Jawaharlal Nehru University student gently played a Dylan number on his guitar. “There’s nothing more grotesque than watching middle-aged men talk about Dylan and the 1960s,” quipped Marqusee, “so bring on the young musician!”
I only got five minutes with the author for a quick one-one-one exchange after the launch - and even that was interrupted continually - but I managed to get a couple of quick quotes about Indo-Pak cricket. (It was an underarm delivery so to speak, but I couldn’t let him go without asking a cricket-related question!) Back in 1996, Marqusee used George Orwell’s pejorative description of sporting contests, “war minus the shooting”, as the title of his World Cup book. Describing the acrimony surrounding the India-Pakistan quarter-final at the time, he lamented the lack of grace shown by the Bangalore crowds who booed Javed Miandad as he walked off the field for the last time in an international match. That was then. Nearly 10 years on, he’s much more optimistic. “I was at the Bangalore and Mohali Tests recently and was deeply moved to see Pakistani flags fluttering among the crowds,” he said. “There was an ocean of difference between Bangalore 1996 and Bangalore 2005 and it was visible in the behaviour of spectators from both sides.”
“Things have changed” he said knowingly, unwilling to leave his hero out of even this discussion.
Thursday, April 28, 2005
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
Murakami’s Norwegian Wood: de-romanticising the outsider
“I probably still haven’t completely adapted to the world,” I said, after giving it some thought. “I don’t know, I feel like this isn’t the real world. The people, the scene: they just don’t seem real to me.”
Midori rested an elbow on the bar and looked at me. “There was something like that in a Jim Morrison song, I’m pretty sure.”
“People are strange when you’re a stranger.”
“Peace,” said Midori.
“Peace,” I said.
References to western pop culture from the late 1960s/early 1970s abound in Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood (starting with its title), as they do in nearly all his work; though he’s probably the most widely known among modern Japanese writers, you won’t find Japanese exotica in his work - no equivalent for the spice-and-musk references that fill the pages of many Indian novels in English, for instance.
But the above passage also highlights one of the things about the novel that I found most striking: the character of its narrator, Toru Watanabe, a young student living in a dormitory in Tokyo. Watanabe is a young man without a centre, without any firm emotional moorings; throughout the novel, one gets the sense of someone on the outside, looking in with a mildly puzzled expression on his face. And yet - this is important - he isn’t a romantic figure (in the heroic or anti-heroic sense) either. None of the nouns or adjectives we commonly use to describe such characters - “loner”, “malcontent”, “drifter”, “brooding” - really apply to him, because these are words that have acquired glamorous overtones, thanks to their association with Hollywood stereotypes. And there’s nothing glamorous about Watanabe. He’s an ordinary young man, he mingles with other people, participates in frat-boy jokes and pranks, is “normal” for long stretches, even boring at times. But one still gets the sense that he isn’t quite all there, that he isn’t really interested in being part of the crowd, that he can opt out anytime he chooses.
In this context, it’s interesting that though Norwegian Wood is Watanabe’s story - the story of his relationships with two very different women at a crucial stage of his life - he rarely has much to say. In the book’s conversation passages, the long monologues always belong to someone else; significantly, Watanabe gets to do most of the talking on only one occasion, in a hospital room, where he’s trying to keep a dying old man (the father of his friend Midori) amused.
Watanabe is the latest in a series of disquietingly passive narrators/protagonists I’ve stumbled across recently, characters who rarely seem interested enough to be pro-active, who come across more as blank sheets on which things are being inscribed. Prominent examples are Ka, the melancholy poet in Orhan Pamuk’s Snow, and especially Vikram Lall, the narrator of M G Vassanji’s elegiac The In-Between World of Vikram Lall - a character who, even when he participates in acts of coruption involving large sums of money in Africa, still seems to merely be drifting with the tide, never in control of his own destiny. And another such passive figure from an earlier age could be Jay Gatsby, the “hero” of Watanabe’s favourite novel.
P.S. If any of the above makes Norwegian Wood seem a solemn or ponderous novel, that’s entirely my fault - because I’ve homed in on an aspect of the book that interested me, and gone on about it as if it’s the only thing worth discussing. While pain and loss do run through the story, this is a beautifully written, lucid and, for the most part, uplifting novel. It’s also a good starting point if you want to read Murakami, because it’s the most accessible of his works and a linear narrative. His later books, like The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Kafka on the Shore, are heavy with surrealism and not to all tastes, though I’d still recommend them highly.
Murakami information and links here and here. Interview here on Salon.
Midori rested an elbow on the bar and looked at me. “There was something like that in a Jim Morrison song, I’m pretty sure.”
“People are strange when you’re a stranger.”
“Peace,” said Midori.
“Peace,” I said.
References to western pop culture from the late 1960s/early 1970s abound in Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood (starting with its title), as they do in nearly all his work; though he’s probably the most widely known among modern Japanese writers, you won’t find Japanese exotica in his work - no equivalent for the spice-and-musk references that fill the pages of many Indian novels in English, for instance.
But the above passage also highlights one of the things about the novel that I found most striking: the character of its narrator, Toru Watanabe, a young student living in a dormitory in Tokyo. Watanabe is a young man without a centre, without any firm emotional moorings; throughout the novel, one gets the sense of someone on the outside, looking in with a mildly puzzled expression on his face. And yet - this is important - he isn’t a romantic figure (in the heroic or anti-heroic sense) either. None of the nouns or adjectives we commonly use to describe such characters - “loner”, “malcontent”, “drifter”, “brooding” - really apply to him, because these are words that have acquired glamorous overtones, thanks to their association with Hollywood stereotypes. And there’s nothing glamorous about Watanabe. He’s an ordinary young man, he mingles with other people, participates in frat-boy jokes and pranks, is “normal” for long stretches, even boring at times. But one still gets the sense that he isn’t quite all there, that he isn’t really interested in being part of the crowd, that he can opt out anytime he chooses.
In this context, it’s interesting that though Norwegian Wood is Watanabe’s story - the story of his relationships with two very different women at a crucial stage of his life - he rarely has much to say. In the book’s conversation passages, the long monologues always belong to someone else; significantly, Watanabe gets to do most of the talking on only one occasion, in a hospital room, where he’s trying to keep a dying old man (the father of his friend Midori) amused.
Watanabe is the latest in a series of disquietingly passive narrators/protagonists I’ve stumbled across recently, characters who rarely seem interested enough to be pro-active, who come across more as blank sheets on which things are being inscribed. Prominent examples are Ka, the melancholy poet in Orhan Pamuk’s Snow, and especially Vikram Lall, the narrator of M G Vassanji’s elegiac The In-Between World of Vikram Lall - a character who, even when he participates in acts of coruption involving large sums of money in Africa, still seems to merely be drifting with the tide, never in control of his own destiny. And another such passive figure from an earlier age could be Jay Gatsby, the “hero” of Watanabe’s favourite novel.
P.S. If any of the above makes Norwegian Wood seem a solemn or ponderous novel, that’s entirely my fault - because I’ve homed in on an aspect of the book that interested me, and gone on about it as if it’s the only thing worth discussing. While pain and loss do run through the story, this is a beautifully written, lucid and, for the most part, uplifting novel. It’s also a good starting point if you want to read Murakami, because it’s the most accessible of his works and a linear narrative. His later books, like The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Kafka on the Shore, are heavy with surrealism and not to all tastes, though I’d still recommend them highly.
Murakami information and links here and here. Interview here on Salon.
They also serve who write Owner’s Manuals
Many years, perhaps decades, from now, when aliens land on post-apocalypse Earth with their shovel thingies to dig up clues to what our civilisation was like, they will find in buried millennium capsules sheafs of paper printed with the formal instructions we humans used to write out for each other. Reading these will give them a very misleading idea of our sense of humour. Yesterday I saw an owner’s manual for an air-conditioner which included, under the “Dos and Donts” section, the following directive:
“Do use the air conditioner only for cooling the room:
and not for other purposes like drying clothes, preserving foods, keeping animals or cultivating vegetables.”
[Bold marks mine]
This warning was accompanied by a picture of a frowning air-conditioner, arms folded in defiance, looking askance at a tub of fruits that had been placed before it. Like an angry God unappeased by offerings. A more imaginative artist might also have depicted pomeranians or chihuahuas growing in test-tubes in the rapidly cooling room, but then a more imaginative artist may not have been working on this particular project.
The AC manual reminded me of the notice I saw outside the ticket window for a film screening at Siri Fort auditorium once: “No cellphones, cameras, food items, bombs, drink items, small babies etc etc... to be carried into hall.” Clever trick, inserting “bombs” into the middle of the sentence like that. Would throw off even the most accomplished terrorist. Or, speaking of terrorists, the visa application form that shrewdly asks the question, “Have you perpetuated terrorist activities in any of the other countries in which you have got visa approval?”
I still love books but owner’s manuals/formal directives are rapidly catching up with press releases as my preferred reading-for-entertainment. I do worry about those aliens though, and what they'll think.
“Do use the air conditioner only for cooling the room:
and not for other purposes like drying clothes, preserving foods, keeping animals or cultivating vegetables.”
[Bold marks mine]
This warning was accompanied by a picture of a frowning air-conditioner, arms folded in defiance, looking askance at a tub of fruits that had been placed before it. Like an angry God unappeased by offerings. A more imaginative artist might also have depicted pomeranians or chihuahuas growing in test-tubes in the rapidly cooling room, but then a more imaginative artist may not have been working on this particular project.
The AC manual reminded me of the notice I saw outside the ticket window for a film screening at Siri Fort auditorium once: “No cellphones, cameras, food items, bombs, drink items, small babies etc etc... to be carried into hall.” Clever trick, inserting “bombs” into the middle of the sentence like that. Would throw off even the most accomplished terrorist. Or, speaking of terrorists, the visa application form that shrewdly asks the question, “Have you perpetuated terrorist activities in any of the other countries in which you have got visa approval?”
I still love books but owner’s manuals/formal directives are rapidly catching up with press releases as my preferred reading-for-entertainment. I do worry about those aliens though, and what they'll think.
Other people's blogs
I saw a comic strip recently, I think it was in the New York Times, in which the joke ran along the following lines:
Man A is at a computer, gazing riveted at the screen. Man B approaches, asks “What are you doing?”
Man A: “I’m blogging.”
Man B: “What’s a blog?”
Man A: “Oh, it’s an online diary. I use it to record whatever I do all day.”
Man B: “And what do you do all day?”
Man A: “I read other people’s blogs.”
Determined to take a break, I spent an unprecedented two consecutive days at home, doing nothing major outside of reading (and gazing sadly at my dust-laden DVDs). Finished two Artemis Fowls, three Lemony Snickets, a Dilbert anthology, half of Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate and a few stories from Penguin’s new anthology of “new writing from India”, First Proof. (Recommended: Jerry Pinto’s piece on the vamp in Hindi cinema, “The Woman Who Could Not Care”, with some provocative, unselfconscious writing on movies that many of us don’t believe are even worth thinking about, let alone writing about.)
For once, I also spent more time checking other people’s blogs than adding to my own. This was partly laziness and partly a version of Joey’s malaise in that Friends episode: “I tried to write down my thoughts, but you know what, it turns out I don’t have as many thoughts as you’d think.”
So I'll take the easy way out with some quick observations on developments in the blogosphere:
- Two of the most prolific readers/reviewers I know of have restarted their sites after cruelly long hiatuses. A big “Thank heavens you’re back!” to Kitabkhana’s Hurree Babu (whose offline identity was recently “outed” in India Today’s surprisingly tolerant story on blogging). See this post on lit-bloggers trying to change the world. Meanwhile, Uma Mahadevan-Dasgupta has put up an eye-poppingly large number of posts since I last checked Indian Writing, including these ones on the Marine Drive rape and this oneon pavement bookshops.
- On India Uncut, Amit Varma continues to make pointed observations about the state of the nation and its many clowns in pithy posts like this one on K S Sudershan and this one on posthumous awards.
- Rahul Bhatia travels to Old Meerut.
- Among the more personal blogs, Samit Basu has this hilarious take on the Pepsi Bubbly song.
- And The Letterhead has returned from Paris, Venice, Rome and Florence and posted a number of snapshots that make me want to rush out and start a photo blog pronto.
There’s probably a lot that I’ve missed, but until I get around to using Bloglines (which allows you to see updates on various people’s blogs at one go), this will have to do.
Man A is at a computer, gazing riveted at the screen. Man B approaches, asks “What are you doing?”
Man A: “I’m blogging.”
Man B: “What’s a blog?”
Man A: “Oh, it’s an online diary. I use it to record whatever I do all day.”
Man B: “And what do you do all day?”
Man A: “I read other people’s blogs.”
Determined to take a break, I spent an unprecedented two consecutive days at home, doing nothing major outside of reading (and gazing sadly at my dust-laden DVDs). Finished two Artemis Fowls, three Lemony Snickets, a Dilbert anthology, half of Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate and a few stories from Penguin’s new anthology of “new writing from India”, First Proof. (Recommended: Jerry Pinto’s piece on the vamp in Hindi cinema, “The Woman Who Could Not Care”, with some provocative, unselfconscious writing on movies that many of us don’t believe are even worth thinking about, let alone writing about.)
For once, I also spent more time checking other people’s blogs than adding to my own. This was partly laziness and partly a version of Joey’s malaise in that Friends episode: “I tried to write down my thoughts, but you know what, it turns out I don’t have as many thoughts as you’d think.”
So I'll take the easy way out with some quick observations on developments in the blogosphere:
- Two of the most prolific readers/reviewers I know of have restarted their sites after cruelly long hiatuses. A big “Thank heavens you’re back!” to Kitabkhana’s Hurree Babu (whose offline identity was recently “outed” in India Today’s surprisingly tolerant story on blogging). See this post on lit-bloggers trying to change the world. Meanwhile, Uma Mahadevan-Dasgupta has put up an eye-poppingly large number of posts since I last checked Indian Writing, including these ones on the Marine Drive rape and this oneon pavement bookshops.
- On India Uncut, Amit Varma continues to make pointed observations about the state of the nation and its many clowns in pithy posts like this one on K S Sudershan and this one on posthumous awards.
- Rahul Bhatia travels to Old Meerut.
- Among the more personal blogs, Samit Basu has this hilarious take on the Pepsi Bubbly song.
- And The Letterhead has returned from Paris, Venice, Rome and Florence and posted a number of snapshots that make me want to rush out and start a photo blog pronto.
There’s probably a lot that I’ve missed, but until I get around to using Bloglines (which allows you to see updates on various people’s blogs at one go), this will have to do.
Thursday, April 21, 2005
Too many toadies spoil the interview
A couple of days ago I interviewed the foreign head of a TV channel with operations in India. It was a casual chat - didn’t take long, 15 or 20 minutes - and there was a relaxed exchanging of Qs and As, even some small talk. It went well.
I’m not on the TV beat or anything, but it so happened that I’d met the same chappie on his previous visit to India too, around a year and a half ago. On that occasion the interview was a nightmare: I couldn’t get the questions out right, felt certain I was asking stupid/obvious things (which added to the underconfidence), felt inadequate and hopeless; and at the end of it all I didn’t have anything resembling a story.
So what was the difference between the two occasions? Well, this time the interview was a one-on-one. The surroundings were casual, it was just the two of us chatting, there was nothing more intrusive than a company representative keeping tabs on us discreetly from a distance, presumably to make sure I didn’t poke his boss in the eye or something. But on the last occasion, we had been sitting in a conference room, a set-up meant to emphasise the fact that this was a formal meet...and present in the room along with the two of us were six others, mainly PR people of different shapes and hues. They just sat there and watched, scribbled their own notes intently, occasionally even interrupted when one of them imagined there was a communication gap between the interviewee and myself. The result, like I said before, was disastrous. I had a similarly bad experience interviewing a watch company CEO in Basel a couple of weeks ago.
The reason a simple interview sometimes turns into a wedding party is that there are many levels of intermediaries between interviewer and subject. At the most basic level, there will be a person from the PR agency representing the company/individual. If it’s a biggish company, there will be the internal corporate communication department to contend with too. Then there’s the matter of PR agencies using interviews as training grounds for their junior employees, so that there’ll always be at least one earnest-faced creature resembling Asok the Intern in the Dilbert strip.
It becomes far worse when you’re interviewing the head of a foreign company with a franchisee/branch in India, because then the number of intermediaries gets automatically doubled. Plus the “gora aadmi” complex ensures that the Indian PR people will be present in full strength, so they can be seen collecting each pearl that drips from the great man’s mouth and preserving them for eternity in their notebooks.
I’m amazed how people manage to work in public relations or corporate communication for years at a stretch without understanding that interviewing has to be an intimate process, most effective when a comfort level is allowed to be established. Any interview - even the most casual one, where the questioner and the subject know each other very well - has an element of artifice, of role-playing, built into it. It’s an unnatural concept to begin with, and the last thing that’s required is to contrive to make it even more awkward for both parties. Even CEOs, celebrities - people who you’d imagine are accustomed to hangers-on bowing and scraping about them - even they open up a lot more when there’s a one-on-one conversation that acquires a rhythm. Unless the subject is terribly reclusive or insecure or in a nasty mood or suffering from laryngitis or V S Naipaul without Lady Nadira, there’s always a better chance of finding common ground this way.
Which is one of the reasons doing author interviews is generally such a pleasure - they are almost always just two-person affairs. The promotions people in publishing houses seem to understand the need for privacy much better than their brethren elsewhere. Or - dare I be cynical about this? - maybe they just stay away because they aren’t interested in hearing people talk about books!
I’m not on the TV beat or anything, but it so happened that I’d met the same chappie on his previous visit to India too, around a year and a half ago. On that occasion the interview was a nightmare: I couldn’t get the questions out right, felt certain I was asking stupid/obvious things (which added to the underconfidence), felt inadequate and hopeless; and at the end of it all I didn’t have anything resembling a story.
So what was the difference between the two occasions? Well, this time the interview was a one-on-one. The surroundings were casual, it was just the two of us chatting, there was nothing more intrusive than a company representative keeping tabs on us discreetly from a distance, presumably to make sure I didn’t poke his boss in the eye or something. But on the last occasion, we had been sitting in a conference room, a set-up meant to emphasise the fact that this was a formal meet...and present in the room along with the two of us were six others, mainly PR people of different shapes and hues. They just sat there and watched, scribbled their own notes intently, occasionally even interrupted when one of them imagined there was a communication gap between the interviewee and myself. The result, like I said before, was disastrous. I had a similarly bad experience interviewing a watch company CEO in Basel a couple of weeks ago.
The reason a simple interview sometimes turns into a wedding party is that there are many levels of intermediaries between interviewer and subject. At the most basic level, there will be a person from the PR agency representing the company/individual. If it’s a biggish company, there will be the internal corporate communication department to contend with too. Then there’s the matter of PR agencies using interviews as training grounds for their junior employees, so that there’ll always be at least one earnest-faced creature resembling Asok the Intern in the Dilbert strip.
It becomes far worse when you’re interviewing the head of a foreign company with a franchisee/branch in India, because then the number of intermediaries gets automatically doubled. Plus the “gora aadmi” complex ensures that the Indian PR people will be present in full strength, so they can be seen collecting each pearl that drips from the great man’s mouth and preserving them for eternity in their notebooks.
I’m amazed how people manage to work in public relations or corporate communication for years at a stretch without understanding that interviewing has to be an intimate process, most effective when a comfort level is allowed to be established. Any interview - even the most casual one, where the questioner and the subject know each other very well - has an element of artifice, of role-playing, built into it. It’s an unnatural concept to begin with, and the last thing that’s required is to contrive to make it even more awkward for both parties. Even CEOs, celebrities - people who you’d imagine are accustomed to hangers-on bowing and scraping about them - even they open up a lot more when there’s a one-on-one conversation that acquires a rhythm. Unless the subject is terribly reclusive or insecure or in a nasty mood or suffering from laryngitis or V S Naipaul without Lady Nadira, there’s always a better chance of finding common ground this way.
Which is one of the reasons doing author interviews is generally such a pleasure - they are almost always just two-person affairs. The promotions people in publishing houses seem to understand the need for privacy much better than their brethren elsewhere. Or - dare I be cynical about this? - maybe they just stay away because they aren’t interested in hearing people talk about books!
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
Revisiting Deewar
It’s sad when the films you’ve grown up with, the ones that form some of your earliest memories, turn out to be disappointing, even a little embarrassing, when you return to them. It’s like going back to that big family bungalow you remember vaguely from your childhood and discovering it was just a little cottage all along, with a smallish courtyard.
Bachchan films from the mid/late 1970s and early 1980s are the points of reference in my movie mythology, but I saw almost all of them as an immature viewer, too young for much to register - which means there’s plenty of scope for disappointment on a second viewing 20 years later. I saw some of Silsila on TV recently and while it’s still lovely in parts I was irked by some of the forcedness of the first half -- A.B. and Shashi Kapoor (one nearly 40 when the film was made, the other a couple of years over 40) trying too hard to be young frat-boys; Rekha a little too heavily made up; Sanjeev Kumar a little too constipated, as he so often was, the yellow tulips in the field a little too yellow. Rant rant.
More traumatic was a viewing of one of my most beloved childhood movies, Amar Akbar Anthony, which revealed that it was a rambling, episodic film with a narrative structure that fell victim to a cardinal principle of mainstream Hindi cinema: that screen time, action, romance, comedy must be equally divided between the three heroes.
I’m not claiming to have suddenly discovered that these are bad films, just that some of them have been inflated by our memories. Which is why it’s a solace to turn to the few movies that do come through the prism of time and memory intact. Sholay is the obvious example and I’ve written about it a couple of times, but another such film, one I think always gets short shrift, is Deewar, a movie that has been stereotyped endlessly, and is consequently all but lost today in a sea of parodies.
If you haven’t seen Deewar in a long time and are asked to prepare a list of associations, I imagine it will look something like this: A brooding Bachchan. Dramatic pealing of bells in a temple, followed by a prolonged death scene. Nirupa Roy in yet another teary mother act. Shashi Kapoor bleating “Bhai” and, of course, with nostrils flaring self-righteously, “Mere Paas Ma Hai.” Bachchan’s confrontation with the Shiva statue. “Mera baap chor hai” inscribed on his arm. A litany of familiar images and dialogues that have, with time, turned into cliches.
But watch the film without all this baggage and you might be surprised at how powerful and mature it is - and how its most effective scenes are the quieter ones, the ones that haven’t been handed down to us as typical “Deewar moments”. One scene that sticks with me is when Ma is unwell and the fugitive son Vijay (Bachchan) can’t see her because police have been posted around the hospital. He waits in a van parked a few blocks away while his girlfriend (Parveen Babi) goes to check on the level of security. She returns, shakes her head, tells him it’s impossible for him to go there; and Bachchan (who’s wearing dark glasses - a chilling touch in this scene) says in a completely deadpan voice, face devoid of all emotion, “Aur main apne Ma ko milne nahin jaa sakta hoon.” No overt attempt at irony, pathos or hysteria (and how many other Indian actors would have, or could have, played the scene this way?), just the calm acceptance of a man who is taking the last steps towards his destiny and knows it. The fatalism and despair that mark Deewar’s final scenes is rarely ever commented on, because it wouldn’t fit too well with the popular image of the film as a pro-active, “angry young man” story.
Another scene that comes to mind is the one where Bachchan hesitantly calls his mother on the phone, arranges to meet her at the temple, then tries to say something more but can’t get the words out and just puts the phone down instead. The movie’s power draws as much from its silences as from its flaming dialogue, and the writing of Salim-Javed, in conjunction with Bachchan’s incomparable performance, take it to heights Indian cinema has rarely touched since.
Even the Bachchan performance, though iconic, remains mis-appreciated in my opinion, since it’s remembered for all the wrong reasons - for the flashing eyes rather than the dark glasses, for the booming monologues rather than the quieter moments. Rarely again would he ever be so understated; superstardom took over and he fell into the image trap, playing to galleries, playing inside moth-eaten palimpsests. Salim-Javed split up and the writing in the later Bachchan films was never as subtle as it had been in the earlier ones. Contrast the understated beauty of Deewar‘s best moments, for instance, with some shamelessly overwrought scenes in his later movies - in Sharaabi, for instance, when, glycerine firmly in eye, lump in throat, he tells his father (played by Pran) “Aapne meri hansi dekhi, lekin uske peeche chipe aansoo nahin dekhe”. Everything spelt out by a mediocre screenplay.
The power of Deewar, on the other hand, lies in its ability to make us feel the tragedy rather than present it to us all gift-wrapped on a platter. Watch it again and see for yourself.
Bachchan films from the mid/late 1970s and early 1980s are the points of reference in my movie mythology, but I saw almost all of them as an immature viewer, too young for much to register - which means there’s plenty of scope for disappointment on a second viewing 20 years later. I saw some of Silsila on TV recently and while it’s still lovely in parts I was irked by some of the forcedness of the first half -- A.B. and Shashi Kapoor (one nearly 40 when the film was made, the other a couple of years over 40) trying too hard to be young frat-boys; Rekha a little too heavily made up; Sanjeev Kumar a little too constipated, as he so often was, the yellow tulips in the field a little too yellow. Rant rant.
More traumatic was a viewing of one of my most beloved childhood movies, Amar Akbar Anthony, which revealed that it was a rambling, episodic film with a narrative structure that fell victim to a cardinal principle of mainstream Hindi cinema: that screen time, action, romance, comedy must be equally divided between the three heroes.
I’m not claiming to have suddenly discovered that these are bad films, just that some of them have been inflated by our memories. Which is why it’s a solace to turn to the few movies that do come through the prism of time and memory intact. Sholay is the obvious example and I’ve written about it a couple of times, but another such film, one I think always gets short shrift, is Deewar, a movie that has been stereotyped endlessly, and is consequently all but lost today in a sea of parodies.
If you haven’t seen Deewar in a long time and are asked to prepare a list of associations, I imagine it will look something like this: A brooding Bachchan. Dramatic pealing of bells in a temple, followed by a prolonged death scene. Nirupa Roy in yet another teary mother act. Shashi Kapoor bleating “Bhai” and, of course, with nostrils flaring self-righteously, “Mere Paas Ma Hai.” Bachchan’s confrontation with the Shiva statue. “Mera baap chor hai” inscribed on his arm. A litany of familiar images and dialogues that have, with time, turned into cliches.
But watch the film without all this baggage and you might be surprised at how powerful and mature it is - and how its most effective scenes are the quieter ones, the ones that haven’t been handed down to us as typical “Deewar moments”. One scene that sticks with me is when Ma is unwell and the fugitive son Vijay (Bachchan) can’t see her because police have been posted around the hospital. He waits in a van parked a few blocks away while his girlfriend (Parveen Babi) goes to check on the level of security. She returns, shakes her head, tells him it’s impossible for him to go there; and Bachchan (who’s wearing dark glasses - a chilling touch in this scene) says in a completely deadpan voice, face devoid of all emotion, “Aur main apne Ma ko milne nahin jaa sakta hoon.” No overt attempt at irony, pathos or hysteria (and how many other Indian actors would have, or could have, played the scene this way?), just the calm acceptance of a man who is taking the last steps towards his destiny and knows it. The fatalism and despair that mark Deewar’s final scenes is rarely ever commented on, because it wouldn’t fit too well with the popular image of the film as a pro-active, “angry young man” story.
Another scene that comes to mind is the one where Bachchan hesitantly calls his mother on the phone, arranges to meet her at the temple, then tries to say something more but can’t get the words out and just puts the phone down instead. The movie’s power draws as much from its silences as from its flaming dialogue, and the writing of Salim-Javed, in conjunction with Bachchan’s incomparable performance, take it to heights Indian cinema has rarely touched since.
Even the Bachchan performance, though iconic, remains mis-appreciated in my opinion, since it’s remembered for all the wrong reasons - for the flashing eyes rather than the dark glasses, for the booming monologues rather than the quieter moments. Rarely again would he ever be so understated; superstardom took over and he fell into the image trap, playing to galleries, playing inside moth-eaten palimpsests. Salim-Javed split up and the writing in the later Bachchan films was never as subtle as it had been in the earlier ones. Contrast the understated beauty of Deewar‘s best moments, for instance, with some shamelessly overwrought scenes in his later movies - in Sharaabi, for instance, when, glycerine firmly in eye, lump in throat, he tells his father (played by Pran) “Aapne meri hansi dekhi, lekin uske peeche chipe aansoo nahin dekhe”. Everything spelt out by a mediocre screenplay.
The power of Deewar, on the other hand, lies in its ability to make us feel the tragedy rather than present it to us all gift-wrapped on a platter. Watch it again and see for yourself.
Monday, April 18, 2005
Books that share genes: Ira Levin, Steven Pinker
It's always fascinating when the books I’m reading at various times suddenly intersect each other in unexpected ways - thematic similarities, a piece of dialogue here, a phrase there, a striking bit of imagery that evokes a line read somewhere else. At times it’s simply the case that I’m going out of the way to relate two things to each other, even when the link is tenuous. But that certainly isn’t what happened in the most recent instance. A few days ago Amit Varma gave me Steven Pinker’s acclaimed book The Blank Slate, a revisiting of the human nature debate - to what extent people’s behaviour is determined by their genes as compared to their environment. It’ll take me some time to get through (non-fiction not being my strongest point as a reader) but I read the prologue and it looks very interesting.
Anyway, I took the Pinker home, set it down and got back to the book I was already halfway through, Ira Levin’s The Boys From Brazil - a creepy 1970s thriller about a Nazi plot...but no, I’m not going to do the spoiler thing this time. Enough to say that it has to do with genes and with controlling environments to foster a certain type of human being. And that it’s probably more relevant today than when it was written. I was struck by the link between these two books that occupy such completely different genres.
Levin has the ability to get under your skin and stay there. Despite being a writer of bestsellers, a novelist working in a popular genre, he somehow has a reputation more as a cult author than a mainstream one. (It’s amazing how little on him there is on the Web and strangely his books are rarely ever available in a firsthand bookstore in Delhi, though you’ll see the occasional moth-eaten copy in roadstalls.) Paranoia is the key to his stories - from a young housewife worrying that her husband might be in collusion with Satanists (Rosemary’s Baby) to another young housewife (The Stepford Wives) finding herself in a little town where all the women are unnervingly docile. The Boys From Brazil takes this to another level: here, an elderly Nazi-hunter (based on the real-life Simon Wiesenthal and played by Laurence Olivier in the 1978 film version) tries to find out why a group of Nazis, under the instructions of the notorious “Doctor Death”, Josef Mengele, are plotting the murders of unconnected 65-year-old men in various countries.
Having already seen the film years earlier, I was familiar with the central plot revelation, but that didn’t make the book any less effective. Read The Boys From Brazil and any other Levins you can scrape off the Daryaganj sidewalks (if you’re in Delhi) if you’re seeking genuine, subversive thrills. Meanwhile, I’m starting on the Steven Pinker (which, incidentally, has a brief reference to Mengele and his sadistic experiments in concentration camps).
Anyway, I took the Pinker home, set it down and got back to the book I was already halfway through, Ira Levin’s The Boys From Brazil - a creepy 1970s thriller about a Nazi plot...but no, I’m not going to do the spoiler thing this time. Enough to say that it has to do with genes and with controlling environments to foster a certain type of human being. And that it’s probably more relevant today than when it was written. I was struck by the link between these two books that occupy such completely different genres.
Levin has the ability to get under your skin and stay there. Despite being a writer of bestsellers, a novelist working in a popular genre, he somehow has a reputation more as a cult author than a mainstream one. (It’s amazing how little on him there is on the Web and strangely his books are rarely ever available in a firsthand bookstore in Delhi, though you’ll see the occasional moth-eaten copy in roadstalls.) Paranoia is the key to his stories - from a young housewife worrying that her husband might be in collusion with Satanists (Rosemary’s Baby) to another young housewife (The Stepford Wives) finding herself in a little town where all the women are unnervingly docile. The Boys From Brazil takes this to another level: here, an elderly Nazi-hunter (based on the real-life Simon Wiesenthal and played by Laurence Olivier in the 1978 film version) tries to find out why a group of Nazis, under the instructions of the notorious “Doctor Death”, Josef Mengele, are plotting the murders of unconnected 65-year-old men in various countries.
Having already seen the film years earlier, I was familiar with the central plot revelation, but that didn’t make the book any less effective. Read The Boys From Brazil and any other Levins you can scrape off the Daryaganj sidewalks (if you’re in Delhi) if you’re seeking genuine, subversive thrills. Meanwhile, I’m starting on the Steven Pinker (which, incidentally, has a brief reference to Mengele and his sadistic experiments in concentration camps).
Another bloggers' meet
Fellow bloggers and Wisden luminaries Amit Varma and Rahul Bhatia (who calls his blog Green Channel, though he knows not why) were in town over the weekend to cover the Kotla ODI and I caught up with them briefly at Khan Market. Cricket was predictably the main topic of discussion. Of special note: some interesting speculation about whether a new twist in BCCI politics might ensure that Sourav Ganguly’s international career is over - Amit has the whole story here.
(Personally speaking, I’ve become sceptical of conspiracy theories following years of discussions with sports journo friends who do the world-weary routine, roll their eyes and say “Oh, everyone knows this is what’s really going on”. But if Ganguly never plays international cricket again remember where you first heard it. And if he does, forget all about this post pronto.)
On a lighter note, Rahul fears that an innocuous suggestion he made to a (heh heh) balls inspector at an equipment factory might have ended the golden age of batting. So if Adam Gilchrist suffers a decline anytime soon you know who to blame. Read about this dramatic development.
As we parted, Amit gave me a favourite book of his - Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, about the nature-nurture debate. Even with dozens of unread titles vying for space in one’s room, and new publications coming in every day for reviews, there’s still a very special thrill that comes with being given a book. And it doesn’t happen often, come to think of it; the last time was probably Abhilasha giving me Persepolis 2 nearly a year ago. Thanks again Amit, and it’s on my Next 5 reading list (the fixed list, not the shifting one).
(Personally speaking, I’ve become sceptical of conspiracy theories following years of discussions with sports journo friends who do the world-weary routine, roll their eyes and say “Oh, everyone knows this is what’s really going on”. But if Ganguly never plays international cricket again remember where you first heard it. And if he does, forget all about this post pronto.)
On a lighter note, Rahul fears that an innocuous suggestion he made to a (heh heh) balls inspector at an equipment factory might have ended the golden age of batting. So if Adam Gilchrist suffers a decline anytime soon you know who to blame. Read about this dramatic development.
As we parted, Amit gave me a favourite book of his - Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, about the nature-nurture debate. Even with dozens of unread titles vying for space in one’s room, and new publications coming in every day for reviews, there’s still a very special thrill that comes with being given a book. And it doesn’t happen often, come to think of it; the last time was probably Abhilasha giving me Persepolis 2 nearly a year ago. Thanks again Amit, and it’s on my Next 5 reading list (the fixed list, not the shifting one).
Saturday, April 16, 2005
S J Perelman, and Motilal Nehru’s laundry
Working my way slowly back into the reading habit like a man recovering from paralysis and re-learning how to walk, I turned to some of S J Perelman’s short stories. Perelman was a great American humorist, an absolute master of the non-sequitur, who worked as a screenplay writer in Hollywood in the 1930s and helped in the development of the Marx Brothers brand of humour, among other things. He was also among the best of a long line of writers with the ability to take the most everyday occurences - a stray remark in a newspaper clipping, for instance - and spin comic masterworks around them. A good example is a Perelman story I read recently with the enticing title "No Starch in the Dhoti, S’Il Vous Plait", which is built entirely around an actual newspaper report about Jawaharlal Nehru. The original report included the following passage:
"Nehru is accused of having a congenital distaste for Americans...it is said that in the luxurious and gracious house of his father, the late Pandit Motilal Nehru - who sent his laundry to Paris - the young Jawaharlal’s British nurse used to make caustic remarks to the impressionable boy about the table manners of his father’s American guests."
What Perelman does is to home in on that one phrase "who sent his laundry to Paris" and write:
"I blenched at the complications this overseas despatch must have entailed. Conducted long before there was any air service between India and Europe, it would have involved posting the stuff by sea - a minimum of three weeks in each direction, in addition to the time it took for processing. Each trip would have created problems of customs examination, valuation, duty (unless Nehru senior got friends to take it through for him, which is improbable; most people detest transporting laundry across the world, even their own). The old gentleman had evidently had a limitless wardrobe, to be able to dispense with it for three months at a time."
The rest of the story is epistolary, as Perelman conjectures the exchange of letters that must have taken place between Motilal Nehru and the Paris-based laundryman. The letters are extremely improbable, but they are hilarious.
(P.S. "No Starch in the Dhoti, S’Il Vous Plait" is just one of the many very entertaining titles for Perelman’s stories; others include "Methinks He Doth Protein Too Much", "And Thou Beside Me, Yacketing in the Wilderness" and "I’ll Always Call You Schnorrer, My African Explorer".)
Woody Allen once said something to the effect that reading Perelman was fatal to a young writer because his style seeps into you... "he’s got such a pronounced, overwhelming comic style that it’s hard not to be influenced by him." I tend to relate this observation to the effect reading P G Wodehouse in school/college has on many young aspiring writers in India. It’s a shame that Perelman isn’t as well known or as widely read here. That probably has something to do with the fact that his stories are full of colloqualisms, with many references to things we aren’t familiar with - staples of American popular culture in the 1930s and 1940s (for every one time I chuckle out loud while reading him, there’s another time I frown, uncertain exactly what he’s talking about even while acknowledging that whatever it is, it’s probably very funny). Whatever the case, he isn’t easy to read and you have to be prepared for the occasional story that’s just too abstruse to get through. It’s a bit like that blurb about Saki, which goes "his writing is so intense, it induces a kind of literary dyspepsia".
Last month incidentally was Perelman’s 100th birth anniversary. Here’s a profile by Time magazine’s Richard Corliss.
Groucho Marx to S J Perelman: “From the moment I picked up your book until I put it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.”
"Nehru is accused of having a congenital distaste for Americans...it is said that in the luxurious and gracious house of his father, the late Pandit Motilal Nehru - who sent his laundry to Paris - the young Jawaharlal’s British nurse used to make caustic remarks to the impressionable boy about the table manners of his father’s American guests."
What Perelman does is to home in on that one phrase "who sent his laundry to Paris" and write:
"I blenched at the complications this overseas despatch must have entailed. Conducted long before there was any air service between India and Europe, it would have involved posting the stuff by sea - a minimum of three weeks in each direction, in addition to the time it took for processing. Each trip would have created problems of customs examination, valuation, duty (unless Nehru senior got friends to take it through for him, which is improbable; most people detest transporting laundry across the world, even their own). The old gentleman had evidently had a limitless wardrobe, to be able to dispense with it for three months at a time."
The rest of the story is epistolary, as Perelman conjectures the exchange of letters that must have taken place between Motilal Nehru and the Paris-based laundryman. The letters are extremely improbable, but they are hilarious.
(P.S. "No Starch in the Dhoti, S’Il Vous Plait" is just one of the many very entertaining titles for Perelman’s stories; others include "Methinks He Doth Protein Too Much", "And Thou Beside Me, Yacketing in the Wilderness" and "I’ll Always Call You Schnorrer, My African Explorer".)
Woody Allen once said something to the effect that reading Perelman was fatal to a young writer because his style seeps into you... "he’s got such a pronounced, overwhelming comic style that it’s hard not to be influenced by him." I tend to relate this observation to the effect reading P G Wodehouse in school/college has on many young aspiring writers in India. It’s a shame that Perelman isn’t as well known or as widely read here. That probably has something to do with the fact that his stories are full of colloqualisms, with many references to things we aren’t familiar with - staples of American popular culture in the 1930s and 1940s (for every one time I chuckle out loud while reading him, there’s another time I frown, uncertain exactly what he’s talking about even while acknowledging that whatever it is, it’s probably very funny). Whatever the case, he isn’t easy to read and you have to be prepared for the occasional story that’s just too abstruse to get through. It’s a bit like that blurb about Saki, which goes "his writing is so intense, it induces a kind of literary dyspepsia".
Last month incidentally was Perelman’s 100th birth anniversary. Here’s a profile by Time magazine’s Richard Corliss.
Groucho Marx to S J Perelman: “From the moment I picked up your book until I put it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.”
A time to read
Need to get back to lit-blogging, which I haven’t been doing much of, what with the Swiss interlude and its persisting after-effects: I regularly have dreams now where watches of all shapes and designs come walking up to me on spindly metal legs, click their many hands together menacingly, pirouette to show off their fancy three-bridge tourbillons, purple sapphired casebacks and moon phase movements, and say (in horribly grating, metallic voices) things like “You’ll never read another book again” etc. It’s very scary.
But yes, after returning I have got back to reading, one step at a time. S J Perelman, Ira Levin, Murakami to start with. Blogs on some of these to follow soon.
But yes, after returning I have got back to reading, one step at a time. S J Perelman, Ira Levin, Murakami to start with. Blogs on some of these to follow soon.
Friday, April 15, 2005
Pundits from Pakistan review
Here’s the full review. Looking through it again, I realise I haven’t said a single negative thing about the book, which is a big no-no for any self-respecting reviewer; no matter how good a book is, we’re expected to throw something in that prevents the review from being over-adulatory. Well, no apologies: I honestly didn’t find anything so seriously flawed that it (de)merited a mention, given that I had to leave a lot of good stuff out anyway. (When there’s a book you really, really want to write about, even 1,000 words is not enough; while on that subject, read Nilanjana S Roy on the 300-word review.)
Was discussing Pundits with nitpickety Shougat (who’s also reviewed it, for Today) and he pointed out that there’s one really ugly sentence in the book’s prologue (it involves the phrase “glistens moist with a numberless hues” and it is over-the-top). But in a way, that’s higher praise than anything I’ve written in my review; when someone as hard to please as Shog the Dawg picks on one sentence in a 340-page book, you know you have a winner.
The review:
Pundits From Pakistan: On Tour With India, 2003-04
(Rahul Bhattacharya; Picador India; Rs 275)
The cricket book we’ve been waiting for is finally here. After reams of cliched, soul-deadening match reports and scorecard collations, after numerous laboured “biographies” that swamp their subjects in a tangle of numbers, Rahul Bhattacharya’s Pundits From Pakistan comes as a burst of fresh air. This account by a young Indian reporter witnessing a historic, bridge-building cricket series and discovering Pakistan in the process is full of thoughtful, observant writing that reinforces the old aphorism “What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?”
Pundits is the result of the author’s experiences while covering the Indian team’s tour of Pakistan in March-April 2004. This tour - which saw some exceptional cricket played over three Tests and five one-dayers - would eventually be regarded a significant step forward in relations between the two countries. However, there weren’t too many positive signals sent out before it began. Players were understandably concerned about security, TV channels squabbled over telecast rights, politicians and cricket boards played mindgames with each other - and that’s without even mentioning what the Shiv Sena’s hoodlums were up to.
Bhattacharya starts his narrative by detailing the almost comical series of events that unfolded before the Indian team, and a huge contingent of fans and journalists, was finally able to embark. The tour eventually gets underway: the author makes friends with Pakistani journalists; feels the full effect of Indian popular culture in a cybercafe in Multan; mulls the similarities and differences between Karachi and Mumbai; discovers why eunuchs are inordinately fond of Mohammad Sami. He conducts delightfully piquant interviews with Abdul Qadir and Aaqib Javed and provides a hilarious pen portrait of Shoaib Akhtar: “He has infuriated his team and administrators by dancing in the discos of South Africa after pulling out of a Test match with an injured knee...He has felled top batsmen and held their bleeding bodies in his benevolent arms...He has been born with pancake-flat feet and a motor mouth.”
And then, there’s the cricket. Anyone familiar with much recently published cricket literature will know that most books, even the ones that begin promisingly, turn into compendiums of scorecards and newspaper-style reportage once the actual matches begin. Pundits, mercifully, does not. One of Bhattacharya’s most creditable achievements is that the match descriptions don’t split his book right down the middle. He describes the cricket alright, describes it in reasonable detail; don’t believe anyone who tells you this is more a travelogue than a cricket book. But he manages throughout to capture the activity on the sidelines (in the Indo-Pak context, often more interesting than the actual play) as well -- capturing crowd moods, learning from a retired cricketer while watching a match that Inzamam ul Haq turned to batting because he was called for chucking as a 12-year-old bowler!
Bhattacharya knows both his cricketing history and his literature, and he uses references in gently illuminating ways - invoking Gabriel Garcia Marquez and W G Grace with equal felicity. The personal touch is evident even in the photo captions - clearly written by the author himself - where, for instance, an L Balaji delivery is likened to the bowling of Sydney Barnes, the legendary swing bowler who plied his wares a century ago.
Nor does he shy away from expressing strong views, not even when it means questioning the logic behind one of the game’s most accepted traditions: that umpires should give batsmen the benefit of doubt. (“To argue that the batsman has just the one chance is facile,” he says, “Any bowler will tell you that, as often as not, one chance is all he will have to remove a batsman.”) Whether or not you agree with all his arguments, you have to admire their articulacy.
The writing is empathetic and all-encompassing; this comes across not just in the observations on Pakistan and its people but also in the profiles of cricketers - which is vital, for cricket reportage in India is often jaundiced and small-minded. Bhattacharya doesn’t use one cricketer’s achievements to belittle those of another (a favourite pastime of sports writers everywhere). The ability to appreciate different talents can be seen in his nuanced observations on cricketers (On Tendulkar: “At times it was tempting to play him REM singing ‘You wore our expectations like an armoured suit’ in the hope that he would rip it off. But he seldom did.” On Dravid: “Watching him is an inspiration because at a most visible level Dravid’s lessons are the lessons of life. After a point all achievement is appetite...How much can you keep biting off? How much can you keep chewing?” Sehwag: “He has nothing of the image of the thinking cricketer. Secretly, everyone wishes they could think like him. His clarity I have not seen in an Indian batsman.” Laxman: “There is no muscle in the art of VVS, no malice, no meanness. Strip away the context...strip it down to a man and a stick and nothing more and the art of VVS barely resonates any less.”)
Pundits is a thoroughly enjoyable read, even if you aren’t that interested in the sport (you can always skip the few pages that get too cricket-heavy). It’s also a reminder to those of us who bewail falling standards in cricket writing that top-notch cricket literature doesn’t have to be obviously flamboyant or stylish. Bhattacharya does have style and wit (don’t miss his description of Ganguly and Dravid’s running between the wickets as “magnets configured to always face each other the wrong way”) but what he has in greater measure is passion, and a gift for observation. Though he doesn’t flinch from recording the unsavoury, he has the ability - rare in both cricket writers and in political commentators - to see the good in most things, both on and off the cricket field, so that he can say, at journey’s end, “for six weeks I had been made to feel special and that would now go away”. This doesn’t come from blind idealism, it comes from open-mindedness. It’s what makes this book.
In his prologue, the author contrasts George Orwell’s cynical view of organised sport (“mimic warfare”, leading to “orgies of hate”) with C L R James’ belief that it can broaden the mind. Bhattacharya’s own book is a joyful vindication of the Jamesian stance.
Was discussing Pundits with nitpickety Shougat (who’s also reviewed it, for Today) and he pointed out that there’s one really ugly sentence in the book’s prologue (it involves the phrase “glistens moist with a numberless hues” and it is over-the-top). But in a way, that’s higher praise than anything I’ve written in my review; when someone as hard to please as Shog the Dawg picks on one sentence in a 340-page book, you know you have a winner.
The review:
Pundits From Pakistan: On Tour With India, 2003-04
(Rahul Bhattacharya; Picador India; Rs 275)
The cricket book we’ve been waiting for is finally here. After reams of cliched, soul-deadening match reports and scorecard collations, after numerous laboured “biographies” that swamp their subjects in a tangle of numbers, Rahul Bhattacharya’s Pundits From Pakistan comes as a burst of fresh air. This account by a young Indian reporter witnessing a historic, bridge-building cricket series and discovering Pakistan in the process is full of thoughtful, observant writing that reinforces the old aphorism “What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?”
Pundits is the result of the author’s experiences while covering the Indian team’s tour of Pakistan in March-April 2004. This tour - which saw some exceptional cricket played over three Tests and five one-dayers - would eventually be regarded a significant step forward in relations between the two countries. However, there weren’t too many positive signals sent out before it began. Players were understandably concerned about security, TV channels squabbled over telecast rights, politicians and cricket boards played mindgames with each other - and that’s without even mentioning what the Shiv Sena’s hoodlums were up to.
Bhattacharya starts his narrative by detailing the almost comical series of events that unfolded before the Indian team, and a huge contingent of fans and journalists, was finally able to embark. The tour eventually gets underway: the author makes friends with Pakistani journalists; feels the full effect of Indian popular culture in a cybercafe in Multan; mulls the similarities and differences between Karachi and Mumbai; discovers why eunuchs are inordinately fond of Mohammad Sami. He conducts delightfully piquant interviews with Abdul Qadir and Aaqib Javed and provides a hilarious pen portrait of Shoaib Akhtar: “He has infuriated his team and administrators by dancing in the discos of South Africa after pulling out of a Test match with an injured knee...He has felled top batsmen and held their bleeding bodies in his benevolent arms...He has been born with pancake-flat feet and a motor mouth.”
And then, there’s the cricket. Anyone familiar with much recently published cricket literature will know that most books, even the ones that begin promisingly, turn into compendiums of scorecards and newspaper-style reportage once the actual matches begin. Pundits, mercifully, does not. One of Bhattacharya’s most creditable achievements is that the match descriptions don’t split his book right down the middle. He describes the cricket alright, describes it in reasonable detail; don’t believe anyone who tells you this is more a travelogue than a cricket book. But he manages throughout to capture the activity on the sidelines (in the Indo-Pak context, often more interesting than the actual play) as well -- capturing crowd moods, learning from a retired cricketer while watching a match that Inzamam ul Haq turned to batting because he was called for chucking as a 12-year-old bowler!
Bhattacharya knows both his cricketing history and his literature, and he uses references in gently illuminating ways - invoking Gabriel Garcia Marquez and W G Grace with equal felicity. The personal touch is evident even in the photo captions - clearly written by the author himself - where, for instance, an L Balaji delivery is likened to the bowling of Sydney Barnes, the legendary swing bowler who plied his wares a century ago.
Nor does he shy away from expressing strong views, not even when it means questioning the logic behind one of the game’s most accepted traditions: that umpires should give batsmen the benefit of doubt. (“To argue that the batsman has just the one chance is facile,” he says, “Any bowler will tell you that, as often as not, one chance is all he will have to remove a batsman.”) Whether or not you agree with all his arguments, you have to admire their articulacy.
The writing is empathetic and all-encompassing; this comes across not just in the observations on Pakistan and its people but also in the profiles of cricketers - which is vital, for cricket reportage in India is often jaundiced and small-minded. Bhattacharya doesn’t use one cricketer’s achievements to belittle those of another (a favourite pastime of sports writers everywhere). The ability to appreciate different talents can be seen in his nuanced observations on cricketers (On Tendulkar: “At times it was tempting to play him REM singing ‘You wore our expectations like an armoured suit’ in the hope that he would rip it off. But he seldom did.” On Dravid: “Watching him is an inspiration because at a most visible level Dravid’s lessons are the lessons of life. After a point all achievement is appetite...How much can you keep biting off? How much can you keep chewing?” Sehwag: “He has nothing of the image of the thinking cricketer. Secretly, everyone wishes they could think like him. His clarity I have not seen in an Indian batsman.” Laxman: “There is no muscle in the art of VVS, no malice, no meanness. Strip away the context...strip it down to a man and a stick and nothing more and the art of VVS barely resonates any less.”)
Pundits is a thoroughly enjoyable read, even if you aren’t that interested in the sport (you can always skip the few pages that get too cricket-heavy). It’s also a reminder to those of us who bewail falling standards in cricket writing that top-notch cricket literature doesn’t have to be obviously flamboyant or stylish. Bhattacharya does have style and wit (don’t miss his description of Ganguly and Dravid’s running between the wickets as “magnets configured to always face each other the wrong way”) but what he has in greater measure is passion, and a gift for observation. Though he doesn’t flinch from recording the unsavoury, he has the ability - rare in both cricket writers and in political commentators - to see the good in most things, both on and off the cricket field, so that he can say, at journey’s end, “for six weeks I had been made to feel special and that would now go away”. This doesn’t come from blind idealism, it comes from open-mindedness. It’s what makes this book.
In his prologue, the author contrasts George Orwell’s cynical view of organised sport (“mimic warfare”, leading to “orgies of hate”) with C L R James’ belief that it can broaden the mind. Bhattacharya’s own book is a joyful vindication of the Jamesian stance.
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
Deconstructing Sidhu
What is it with Navjot Singh Sidhu? How does his mind work? Does it? What I wouldn’t give to crack his skull open just to study the intricate circuitry of his brain (not that I ever passed Biology in school). The skull-cracking would of course have side-benefits.
I chanced on a debate on NDTV India a couple of days ago, a discussion on various cricketing topics with Sidhu as the star “expert”. It was fascinating to watch the silly man leapfrog from one topic to the next without ever spending more than 20 seconds on the subject actually being discussed. Thank to his prolonged ravings, the channel never managed to explore any issues with any depth.
One of the topics, for example, was Wisden’s recent comment that watching Sachin Tendulkar has become a colder experience. (If you want to know more about this controversy, and how the Indian media has merrily blown it up, read this piece by Wisden Asia/Cricinfo editor Sambit Bal.) NDTV’s focus was, roughly speaking, “Has Tendulkar lost his magic?” So what does Mr Sidhu do? After making exactly one, highly dubious observation on Tendulkar (“he is the one cricketer from our country to be universally acknowledged as the best”), he picks on the description of Wisden as a cricketing Bible and commences a long rant about how Wisden can’t be compared with the Bible, the Koran or the Granth Sahib, which are all set in stone and must never be questioned by mortal man. (Where’s Dan Brown when you need him?) The poor anchor had to interrupt and say, “We have to take a short break now, but when we return we’ll hopefully get back to Tendulkar.”
The break was followed by a completely unprovoked thesis (declaimed in Sidhu’s trademark brigadier-general style) on the hegemony of white nations, how the Lords cricket ground is erroneously referred to as the “Mecca of cricket” (by now, religious references had acquired strange and unforeseen prominence on this show) and how cricket would be nothing without the money that pours in from the subcontinent. All true of course, but it had nothing to do with anything. Then, five minutes after blasting Wisden, Sidhu suddenly changed track to gush about what a high-quality magazine it is, and how it shouldn’t be accused of racism. The man has no focus. None.
The infuriating thing about NSS is that he’s still capable of producing the odd remark that’s genuinely entertaining. (On this show, again going off on a tangent, he likened Sehwag to a motorcycle rider performing in a ball of fire: “We all watch, enthralled, because he might die at any time.”) But how much boring nonsense must one sit through to get to that one moment?
I chanced on a debate on NDTV India a couple of days ago, a discussion on various cricketing topics with Sidhu as the star “expert”. It was fascinating to watch the silly man leapfrog from one topic to the next without ever spending more than 20 seconds on the subject actually being discussed. Thank to his prolonged ravings, the channel never managed to explore any issues with any depth.
One of the topics, for example, was Wisden’s recent comment that watching Sachin Tendulkar has become a colder experience. (If you want to know more about this controversy, and how the Indian media has merrily blown it up, read this piece by Wisden Asia/Cricinfo editor Sambit Bal.) NDTV’s focus was, roughly speaking, “Has Tendulkar lost his magic?” So what does Mr Sidhu do? After making exactly one, highly dubious observation on Tendulkar (“he is the one cricketer from our country to be universally acknowledged as the best”), he picks on the description of Wisden as a cricketing Bible and commences a long rant about how Wisden can’t be compared with the Bible, the Koran or the Granth Sahib, which are all set in stone and must never be questioned by mortal man. (Where’s Dan Brown when you need him?) The poor anchor had to interrupt and say, “We have to take a short break now, but when we return we’ll hopefully get back to Tendulkar.”
The break was followed by a completely unprovoked thesis (declaimed in Sidhu’s trademark brigadier-general style) on the hegemony of white nations, how the Lords cricket ground is erroneously referred to as the “Mecca of cricket” (by now, religious references had acquired strange and unforeseen prominence on this show) and how cricket would be nothing without the money that pours in from the subcontinent. All true of course, but it had nothing to do with anything. Then, five minutes after blasting Wisden, Sidhu suddenly changed track to gush about what a high-quality magazine it is, and how it shouldn’t be accused of racism. The man has no focus. None.
The infuriating thing about NSS is that he’s still capable of producing the odd remark that’s genuinely entertaining. (On this show, again going off on a tangent, he likened Sehwag to a motorcycle rider performing in a ball of fire: “We all watch, enthralled, because he might die at any time.”) But how much boring nonsense must one sit through to get to that one moment?
Monday, April 11, 2005
Radio bah bah
It’s probably because music has been a rare and precious thing in my life recently that I feel such resentment towards radio jockeys who don’t let you listen, uninterrupted, to good songs. It’s like a dying man in the desert repeatedly having his water-bottle tugged away from his parched mouth.
One of my curses is that I can’t read/write and listen to music simultaneously, which has meant an enforced falling out with what used to be a great love. The car is now the only place for listening to music. And for the last few months the cassette deck in my car stereo hasn’t been functioning properly, so I’m completely dependent on radio for my daily fix. These days, after shuffling between various channels during a 45-minute drive, if I succeed in hearing three decent songs, I consider it a road well driven. That’s how pathetic my situation is.
Which is why it stings something fierce when, after the familiar opening riffs of a beloved tune begin and the song prepares to move into second gear, the audio track suddenly blanks out so that a smart-ass RJ can come on and say something like "Yeah, folks, this is really one groovy number, isn’t it? I tell you, I really love this song people. I’ve been listening to it since when I was a little baby. But aha, I’m not gonna tell you when that was etc" And then the song, or what's left of it, continues. If you don’t listen to the radio, believe me, this happens all the time.
It’s bad enough that on most of the channels, at least the FM ones, there are more ads, traffic updates and RJ monologues than there is music. (I’d really like to know what the exact ratio is.) But once a song has actually begun, is it too much to ask that it not be mauled thusly? After all, there isn’t even any commercial logic at work in such cases. The channel isn’t going to lose money if the jockey is bound and gagged for four-and-a-half minutes.
I don’t want to start a rant against RJs here, because they are all very soft targets - anyone who listens to one of them for even 10 minutes will know exactly what I mean. So I won’t delve into the inanities, the accents, the redundancies ("the time, folks, is exactly 9.15 on the dot" - ok, ok, I’m delving now). In fact, redundancy is probably the key to the problem: all RJs compulsively talk more than they need to - there are too many words, too many sentences, too much dross and never enough song. I'm buying me a nightingale.
One of my curses is that I can’t read/write and listen to music simultaneously, which has meant an enforced falling out with what used to be a great love. The car is now the only place for listening to music. And for the last few months the cassette deck in my car stereo hasn’t been functioning properly, so I’m completely dependent on radio for my daily fix. These days, after shuffling between various channels during a 45-minute drive, if I succeed in hearing three decent songs, I consider it a road well driven. That’s how pathetic my situation is.
Which is why it stings something fierce when, after the familiar opening riffs of a beloved tune begin and the song prepares to move into second gear, the audio track suddenly blanks out so that a smart-ass RJ can come on and say something like "Yeah, folks, this is really one groovy number, isn’t it? I tell you, I really love this song people. I’ve been listening to it since when I was a little baby. But aha, I’m not gonna tell you when that was etc" And then the song, or what's left of it, continues. If you don’t listen to the radio, believe me, this happens all the time.
It’s bad enough that on most of the channels, at least the FM ones, there are more ads, traffic updates and RJ monologues than there is music. (I’d really like to know what the exact ratio is.) But once a song has actually begun, is it too much to ask that it not be mauled thusly? After all, there isn’t even any commercial logic at work in such cases. The channel isn’t going to lose money if the jockey is bound and gagged for four-and-a-half minutes.
I don’t want to start a rant against RJs here, because they are all very soft targets - anyone who listens to one of them for even 10 minutes will know exactly what I mean. So I won’t delve into the inanities, the accents, the redundancies ("the time, folks, is exactly 9.15 on the dot" - ok, ok, I’m delving now). In fact, redundancy is probably the key to the problem: all RJs compulsively talk more than they need to - there are too many words, too many sentences, too much dross and never enough song. I'm buying me a nightingale.
Saturday, April 09, 2005
Lessons from last leg of Swiss trip
- When interviewing the CEO of Girard Perregaux, do not repeatedly refer to the company as “Gerard Depardieu” and then giggle at your own goof-up. After the first few times, he will not be amused.
- Too much greenery is boring. Give me the multi-coloured landscapes of the Scottish countryside anyday. Or at least the red (blood)-spattered greys of Delhi’s roads.
- The Swiss don’t play cricket at all. Soulless people. (Ok so I never did either. But at least I write about it.)
- (Courtesy Gareth Jones, disgruntled member of FT Switzerland’s marketing team) The place is obsessed with car parks and divests most of its resources in keeping them spanking clean - something no one else in the world does. “Bloody country must’ve started digging holes in the ground the minute Henry Ford announced assembly-line production,” snarled Gareth.
- You will rarely find value-for-money food here. Swiss food is low on quality. “They mess up even the pizzas,” Gareth lamented. “One would think a country that was so close to Italy might have picked up a trick or three. But no.”
- It is possible, even with summer not yet having begun, to swim in an open-air spa halfway up the mountains. (This is what I did at the Les Bains de Lavey resort 60 miles from Lausanne on the only evening of leisure we had on the trip.) Which brings me to another point: there is no such thing as a seriously cold place anywhere on earth. On four consecutive trips now (Scotland, Shimla, Bir and now this) I’ve been duped into carrying heavy woollens with me, only to reach the place and find that a T-shirt is all that’s required.
- Overenthusiastic young lads don’t always make good air hosts. Lufthansa has a fresh crew of rambunctious Indian boys who shout at each other across the aisles and throw beer bottles over the heads of startled passengers. When someone gets up to go to the toilet near landing time, they push him back in his seat, shouting so everyone can hear, “Sir, you will be responsible for MY DEATH and YOUR DEATH and the DEATH of everyone on this plane!”
- It’s one thing to promise your editor that you’ll file stories immediately after each interview, but quite another thing to type on keyboards in foreign countries, where all punctuation marks/special characters (and even some of the letters) are in unfamiliar places and can only be accessed by pressing down three or four keys simultaneously.
- Paper is heavy. We had to offload all our press material at the airport. Every last loving watch description. Which means I’m back in Delhi now with no stories and nothing to do but blog.
- Too much greenery is boring. Give me the multi-coloured landscapes of the Scottish countryside anyday. Or at least the red (blood)-spattered greys of Delhi’s roads.
- The Swiss don’t play cricket at all. Soulless people. (Ok so I never did either. But at least I write about it.)
- (Courtesy Gareth Jones, disgruntled member of FT Switzerland’s marketing team) The place is obsessed with car parks and divests most of its resources in keeping them spanking clean - something no one else in the world does. “Bloody country must’ve started digging holes in the ground the minute Henry Ford announced assembly-line production,” snarled Gareth.
- You will rarely find value-for-money food here. Swiss food is low on quality. “They mess up even the pizzas,” Gareth lamented. “One would think a country that was so close to Italy might have picked up a trick or three. But no.”
- It is possible, even with summer not yet having begun, to swim in an open-air spa halfway up the mountains. (This is what I did at the Les Bains de Lavey resort 60 miles from Lausanne on the only evening of leisure we had on the trip.) Which brings me to another point: there is no such thing as a seriously cold place anywhere on earth. On four consecutive trips now (Scotland, Shimla, Bir and now this) I’ve been duped into carrying heavy woollens with me, only to reach the place and find that a T-shirt is all that’s required.
- Overenthusiastic young lads don’t always make good air hosts. Lufthansa has a fresh crew of rambunctious Indian boys who shout at each other across the aisles and throw beer bottles over the heads of startled passengers. When someone gets up to go to the toilet near landing time, they push him back in his seat, shouting so everyone can hear, “Sir, you will be responsible for MY DEATH and YOUR DEATH and the DEATH of everyone on this plane!”
- It’s one thing to promise your editor that you’ll file stories immediately after each interview, but quite another thing to type on keyboards in foreign countries, where all punctuation marks/special characters (and even some of the letters) are in unfamiliar places and can only be accessed by pressing down three or four keys simultaneously.
- Paper is heavy. We had to offload all our press material at the airport. Every last loving watch description. Which means I’m back in Delhi now with no stories and nothing to do but blog.
Monday, April 04, 2005
Dandee Gilly
Interesting piece here on Adam Gilchrist being the most explosive batsman in cricket history. I’ve long held that not only is Gilchrist the finest active cricketer today – that’s a point many people will agree on anyway – but more crucially, he’s been the best batsman in the world for at least the last three years. Yup, better than Dravid, better than (yuck yuck yuck) Kallis, better than Hayden and Sehwag. It’s always a tricky thing comparing a number 7 “non-specialist” with people whose first job is batting, but there it is, I’ve laid down my hat and so on. I remember recently doing one of those meaningless comparison things with a friend – a man-by-man contrast of Clive Lloyd’s 1980s team with Steve Waugh’s side – and we both agreed that Richards (yes, the immortal, incomparable Viv Richards) was cancelled out by Gilchrist as batsman alone, with wicketkeeping ability still held over in reserve. Now of course that’ll be blasphemy to many people but keep an open mind and think about it.
Nice trivia in this article – for instance, that Gilly “can hit a cricket ball left handed with as much power as anyone in the world yet when he tries to swing a golf club left-handed he can barely hit the ball”. Check it out.
Nice trivia in this article – for instance, that Gilly “can hit a cricket ball left handed with as much power as anyone in the world yet when he tries to swing a golf club left-handed he can barely hit the ball”. Check it out.
Sunday, April 03, 2005
Eat shoots and leaves
After dealing with waves of exotic foreigners who don’t eat non-veg food - and for some strange reason refuse to consume even fish - the attendants at the media centre pantry at BaselWorld are always pleased to see me. The first time I went there seeking food there was much confusion, because when I asked what dishes had the most portions of meat in them, they assumed I wanted to avoid those. “That has ham!” screeched one lady as I piled a jumbo sandwich onto my plate. Yes, isn’t that great, I replied, salivating like Pavlov’s dog. “That’s MEAT. Oh, you have?” the lady said, her face lighting up like a hundred suns. It was a special moment.
I have of course read and heard much about how tough Indian vegetarians have it abroad, but experiencing it firsthand is quite another matter. My marketing colleague/roommate is a “pure” veg, doesn’t even eat egg, and carries with him for days at a stretch home-cooked paranthas and achar that stink up the hotel room. He hordes chocolates to munch on when we travel and gazes wistfully at cakes that look delicious but probably have egg in them. I feel for him as I’ve rarely felt before for vegetarians.
On the train from Basel to Zurich yesterday we met a sad-faced man, a Mumbai-based watch retailer. He was carrying a bag full of apple cores and banana skins. “So tough for us folks,” he complained to my colleague, while giving me resentful sideway glances, “it’s like we’re being punished for respecting the sanctity of life.”
It’s tough enough for me to go several days without any wet food, so I can imagine how bad it must be for these people. And my mind boggles when I see Indians who can’t even speak English living in these places for months/years at a stretch. It’s painful to watch these people trying to communicate their food restrictions to uncomprehending staff at supermarkets.
P.S. for Amrita: Been in Switzerland 4 days and haven’t seen a SINGLE cow yet (though I had a superb beef burger last night).
P.P.S. Just so I’m not the only one to be crucified by any vegetarian who reads this, here is a passionate piece on meat-eating by the famous television journalist and non-vegetarian, Shamya Dasgupta.
I have of course read and heard much about how tough Indian vegetarians have it abroad, but experiencing it firsthand is quite another matter. My marketing colleague/roommate is a “pure” veg, doesn’t even eat egg, and carries with him for days at a stretch home-cooked paranthas and achar that stink up the hotel room. He hordes chocolates to munch on when we travel and gazes wistfully at cakes that look delicious but probably have egg in them. I feel for him as I’ve rarely felt before for vegetarians.
On the train from Basel to Zurich yesterday we met a sad-faced man, a Mumbai-based watch retailer. He was carrying a bag full of apple cores and banana skins. “So tough for us folks,” he complained to my colleague, while giving me resentful sideway glances, “it’s like we’re being punished for respecting the sanctity of life.”
It’s tough enough for me to go several days without any wet food, so I can imagine how bad it must be for these people. And my mind boggles when I see Indians who can’t even speak English living in these places for months/years at a stretch. It’s painful to watch these people trying to communicate their food restrictions to uncomprehending staff at supermarkets.
P.S. for Amrita: Been in Switzerland 4 days and haven’t seen a SINGLE cow yet (though I had a superb beef burger last night).
P.P.S. Just so I’m not the only one to be crucified by any vegetarian who reads this, here is a passionate piece on meat-eating by the famous television journalist and non-vegetarian, Shamya Dasgupta.
Friday, April 01, 2005
Brain candy
At press events/releases/launches in India, there are Bimbos who are required to drape themselves attractively around CEOs and generally provide eye-candy. In the interests of sanity, they are expected never to speak, only to smile glacially or clap their hands as a cue for the audience. On the rare occasions they DO speak (because they are the emcees for the event) they can be relied on to say the most inane things.
It's very different here at BaselWorld. though it's easy at first to be deceived. At watch launches, the attractive woman in question looks like a bimbette from afar, smiles stupidly at everything the CEO says (and he refers patronisingly to her by saying, "Now the beautiful woman to my left will open the case..." and such like) and claps a lot. But be not befooled, she's an ambassador for the company and she knows it, and she does her job better than you can imagine.
I know this because after a Raymond Weil launch, we were doing the leering Indian male routine, going up to the Eye-Candy Woman with smarmy smiles and saying dumb things like "Your watches are so beautiful, were they crafted by God Himself?" Then, more for conversation than anything, we pointed at a random timepiece, one of several on display, and said, "How lovely that one is!" Whereupon the putative bimbette said:
"Oh, that! Yes, brilliant, isn't it? I especially love the way the rose gold tint reflects off the ivory markings. But you know what the really interesting thing about that model is - the fact that they constructed a three-layered dial despite working with mechanical movement etc etc etc etc"
Exeunt feature writer and marketing man, chastened and de-chauvinisted.
It's very different here at BaselWorld. though it's easy at first to be deceived. At watch launches, the attractive woman in question looks like a bimbette from afar, smiles stupidly at everything the CEO says (and he refers patronisingly to her by saying, "Now the beautiful woman to my left will open the case..." and such like) and claps a lot. But be not befooled, she's an ambassador for the company and she knows it, and she does her job better than you can imagine.
I know this because after a Raymond Weil launch, we were doing the leering Indian male routine, going up to the Eye-Candy Woman with smarmy smiles and saying dumb things like "Your watches are so beautiful, were they crafted by God Himself?" Then, more for conversation than anything, we pointed at a random timepiece, one of several on display, and said, "How lovely that one is!" Whereupon the putative bimbette said:
"Oh, that! Yes, brilliant, isn't it? I especially love the way the rose gold tint reflects off the ivory markings. But you know what the really interesting thing about that model is - the fact that they constructed a three-layered dial despite working with mechanical movement etc etc etc etc"
Exeunt feature writer and marketing man, chastened and de-chauvinisted.
Muzak
We learn much about what other people think of us from the music they associate us with. We were traveling by cab (a Merc, ahem) from Zurich airport station to the hotel and my colleague asks the cab driver (in that flamboyant quasi-Italian accent some of us adopt when speaking to a foreigner who we think might not know English well): “Can you play us some music please? Anything you think appropriate.”
So the driver grunts, surfs through various radio stations, moves from classical music (Wagner etc) to the gentle waft of pipe tunes, rejects them all ... and finally settles on Britney Spears.
So the driver grunts, surfs through various radio stations, moves from classical music (Wagner etc) to the gentle waft of pipe tunes, rejects them all ... and finally settles on Britney Spears.
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