Will they still need me?

NEW YORK: It is a brilliant Father’s Day afternoon and I am sitting at McSorley’s, the oldest pub on the buzzing Lower East Side of Manhattan, where my younger daughter lives. She has invited her friends to quaff a few beers with me. Focused on making a life for herself in “this city that never sleeps,” she works hard and makes the most of the vibrant metropolis; mind-ful, I suspect, of the old Frank Sinatra standard: “If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.”

My older daughter, on the other hand, has chosen to make Delhi her home, hanging out with friends from all over the world who happen to live in the capital. Both of them traverse the world with an easy sophistication that is enviable.

When my first daughter was born, my mother gave us a plaque, which read “You must give your children roots and wings. Roots will give them the strength to face any adversity; wings will help them soar above everything to explore new worlds and go farther than you ever did.” As I sat in the pub, with the group of bubbly twenty-somethings, I couldn’t help thinking of my mother’s plaque and marvelling at just how we may have got it right with our daughters.

The older daughter’s roots and the younger one’s wings are a perfect foil for my mother’s advice. They both make their way in the world. While I do draw a sense of satisfaction from their achievements, there is a nevertheless a disturbing arrhythmia in my mind. My thoughts go back to the cheerful holidays spent in our various homes in the US and in India: the warm Christmases, the lazy Sundays; the vacations we shared in Goa, in Europe and in the United States; the hysterical laughter while watching the bumbling antics of Inspector Clouseau in Pink Panther videos. These are comforting and pleasing memories; the sadness comes from knowing such togetherness will become less frequent in the years to come.

Such sweet and sour emotions are a luxury that today’s fathers enjoy. When I was growing up, fathers were remote persons. They inspired awe, sometimes admiration; most often fear but hardly ever love. Whether liberal or conservative, they just did not get involved in their children’s lives. The authoritarian ones ran their children’s lives according to their worldview; the more liberal ones simply accepted things.

If they couldn’t control their children or satisfy them with baubles, they pulled back and became even more distant. The distant father, the absent father, the authoritarian father, the indulgent father… these are classical personality formulations on which much of today’s psychology and literature are based.

This is the thing about Father’s Day: even in blasé Manhattan: it evokes teary reactions in grey-haired men, who are otherwise balanced and not prone to sentimentality. Ever since it was first observed in Fairmont, a small mining town in West Virginia in 1908, the day was “etched in sadness as well as thankfulness”.

The Fairmont event was a church service in remembrance of the 360 men, many of them fathers, killed in a mining disaster the previous year. However, it was not until 1972, when President Richard M Nixon proclaimed it a national holiday that Father’s Day became established and its observance began to spread around the world.

Father’s Day is when children honor and indulge their father. There is some amount of Hallmark Card artifice to it. However, for me, it has always been a pause; a chance to remember the wonderful times growing up with my children; to recognize that the relationship with them is always ambiguous. You love them and hope for nothing in return. Most times, you experience pure joy; other times, there may be sheer aggravation. Underlying it is a bittersweet taste: as involved fathers we try to move heaven and earth to smooth things for our children when they are dependent on us. The haunting question is: will they still need us when we’re 64?

On a brighter note, some day we will have grandchildren on the knee.

This column appeared in DNA, June 26, 2007.

Reaping the Modi whirlwind

It is now clear that Narendra Modi is making an open bid to be the BJP's prime ministerial candidate, your correspondent shares his analysis on the Modi phenomenon from a 2007 column.

Narendra Modi’s victory in Gujarat is an emphatic statement by the people of the state that they have no time for the Congress ideology of political correctness. A proud and entrepreneurial people, if somewhat insular, Gujaratis have historically embraced radical ideologies, starting from Mohandas Gandhi’s fight against the British in the 1930s to Jayprakash Narayan’s nihilist navnirman movement against the Congress in the 1970s.

In the 1990s, Gujarat embraced Hindutva, partly for primordial reasons, but also because they had no faith in the Congress.

The Congress held sway over Gujarat for nearly two decades after the state was formed in 1960. Then, slowly and surely, the Congress appeal diminished. If Narendra Modi survives the next term to 2012, Hindutva will have become the mainstream ideology in the state.

Many liberal Gujaratis have become disenchanted with the Congress; an editor told me: “We don’t want Modi, but where is the Congress? Gujaratis are not going to throw up a Mulayam Singh Yadav or a Mayawati because they want stability. We are rich and have good infrastructure, long before Modi got here.”

Modi has tapped into the Gujarati disillusionment with the Congress. To begin with, they have no time for socialism and nonalignment; in 2002, they challenged the Congress on its secular ideology. In handing Modi a significant electoral triumph, they have begun to question the idea of democracy, preferring an authoritarian leader. Gujarat has revolted against the four pillars of Indian nationalist ideology: socialism, secularism, democracy and nonalignment.

These are the norms the Congress propagated during the nationalist movement and then after Independence. Trouble is, socialism became an excuse for the license-permit Raj; secularism mutated into a pandering to a Muslim vote bank; nonalignment became an anti-American ideology and democracy became a family business. Gujaratis would have none of it; they turned first to JP; now they are willing to take their chances with Modi.

The people of Gujarat are decent and hard-working and try to get along; typically they would support a party like the Congress. Over the years, they came to see the Congress as an elitist and Stalinist organisation in which regional leadership was not encouraged. Instead, the party’s leaders in the state had to be anointed by the High Command.

Even today, young leaders in the state, as on the national stage, are sons and daughters of veterans of the party. This is not true of the BJP. Thus, even sensible people in the state chose to support the nasty and dangerous Hindutva ideology over the feudal setup of the Congress.

It’s not just in politics, but in business as well. The scions of the old mill-owning families in Gujarat are now reduced to living off their parents’ wealth; my friend Sanjay Lalbhai, who presides over the growing Arvind empire, is a notable exception. Gujarat recognises and rewards only entrepreneurship and hard work; while they respect the old generators of wealth, they have no time for their progeny. Today’s big business names in Gujarat were unknown a decade ago. Perhaps that’s why the Gujarati diaspora has done so well all over the world, despite their obvious and severely limiting insularity.

So we must realise that Modi’s success is a vote against the elitism of the Congress. And against the lack of new ideas in the party of Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Patel, the most revered icons of Gujarat politics. The general feeling in Gujarat is that the two were given short shrift in post-Independence politics.

The widespread belief is Gujaratis rarely joined the civil or the defense services because of their proclivity to business. On the other hand, many middle class Gujaratis believe they remained outsiders because of their problems with Hindi, English and Western ways. This is the cause of the dangerous Modi whirlwind we are reaping today.

This column appeared in DNA, December 26, 2007.


Reaping the Modi whirlwind

The US poll battle: race vs gender

Now that the US presidential race is a straight fight between Barrack Obama and Mitt Romney, your correspondent revisits his 2007 column.

A bright 20-something who lives in New York City captured the essence of political debate in the US.

“If you back Obama, the feminists will get you; support Hillary and risk being branded a racist,” she said. As voters turned up to select nominees for both parties, Republican and Democratic, it was evident that the contest in the Democratic Party between Senators Barack Obama (Illinois) and Hillary Clinton (New York) drew most ink.

On the face of it, Democrats mustdecide their nominee on ‘primordial considerations’ of race and gender. But there’s some rational selection criteria.

While the Republicans appear to have settled on John McCain as their presidential candidate, the Democratic aspirants are running neck and neck. With most states having completed their primaries, no clear winner seems to have emerged.

Analysts say the race may not be decided until April and most agree that the balance is now tilted in favour of Obama, an African-American with a Kenyan father and a mother from Kansas.

Brought up in Hawaii and having lived in Indonesia, Obama’s curriculum vita is a sparkling record at Harvard Law School and as a community organiser in Chicago. Hillary Clinton’s resume is as glittery: Yale Law School and eight years in the White House as First Lady.

In the achievements department, both candidates sort of cancel each other out. Obama’s campaign seems to be more sophisticated and better-financed.

His message of change has a subtext in which is an acknowledgment that the days of the ‘boomer generation’ are over. This refers to Americans born between 1946 and 1964, during which a post-war boom saw the US emerge as a global superpower.

During the time it dominated public consciousness, in politics, in business, in the arts and in the academy, this generation also came to be known for what the critic Christopher Lasch called ‘the culture of narcissism’. The term was a catchall for a set of beliefs and fears including worship of fame and celebrity, fear of aging and aversion to commitment and lasting relationships.

Obama is 46 and can be considered a late boomer. He first perked my interest when he was quoted as saying that turn-of-the-century America was dominated by the rule of two major boomers, Bill Clinton and George W Bush; that the dorm-room debates of the ’60s and ’70s over ideology and lifestyle had carried over into national and global politics.

Stirred by the Vietnam War, these differences have polarised America as never before, especially with the ‘shock and awe’ invasion of Iraq ordered by President Bush.

Phrases such as ‘coalition of the willing’ and ‘either you’re with us or against’ sharpened the divide. Obama wants to change that, bringing Democrats, Independents and some Republicans together to restore America’s standing in the world and to bridge the rifts at home.

With this central theme, Obama challenged Hillary Clinton, whose candidacy at the start of the primaries seemed to be a shoo-in. Now that he’s managed to overtake her, the Hillary camp appears to have panicked.

Campaigning in Wisconsin, a top Hillary aide accused Obama of plagiarism, claiming he used words from a 2006 campaign speech by Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick.Obama was quick to dismiss the charges as a ‘desperate’ effort to stay in the race.

The Democratic race is now a fight devolving on character. Both candidates have turned to economic populism posing against the wealthy bankers, oilmen and corporate executives, who amassed huge fortunes under the benign Bush regime and its free-market policies.

As the primaries draw to a close and one of the candidates, woman or black, secures the nomination, he or she will have to contend with the effective dirty tricks lobbies of the Republican underbelly.

It could get down and dirty. In the end, we will have the answer to the crucial question: Is America ready to elect a non-white or non-male President?

This column appeared in DNA, February 20, 2008


The US poll battle: race vs gender

Urban Renewal Politics

When an old, dilapidated building collapsed in Bombay's Nagpada area, my mind floated back to the 1950s when I used to drive past it on my way to school. Even as I empathised with the unfortunate victims, I could also see that Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh only added to the chaos by rushing to the collapse spot like Batman would to a crime scene.

In the Nagpada tragedy, both the authorities and the people compounded the failure of the city’s civic regime.

Why was the chief minister out there? Perhaps he was stung by criticism that he waffled during the massive flood disruption a few weeks ago and so wanted to show that he cared about the city and its denizens. The fact they were mostly poor Muslims was an added political bonus.

As for the much-touted 'aam aadmi' (common man), he and she turned out to satisfy their morbid curiosity and, without the firm hand of civic authority to hold them in check, they got in the way of rescue efforts, adding to the tragedy.

South Bombay MP Milind Deora hit the nail on the head when he urged the chief minister to "let go." Deora articulated an opinion that is growing across the country. Urban renewal, which the Prime Minister has identified as a top priority in his policy agenda, is not just a matter of finance, technology and civic action by well-meaning citizens; it will succeed only when the political system permits cities to throw up their own political leadership.

Already in the last elections, we saw two highly regarded chief ministers, S M Krishna in Karnataka and Chandrababu Naidu in Andhra Pradesh, swept out of power. They acted more like mayors of Bangalore and Hyderabad than as chief ministers.

Fortunately, there is a model that can be replicated. In Delhi, a strong civic leadership emerged and survived despite the fact the city has the powerful central government breathing down its neck. Sheila Dikshit managed to assert herself, even when the retrograde BJP was in power at the Centre. She pushed through many development initiatives including traffic management schemes such as flyovers and underpasses, mass transport projects like the Metro, pollution control programmes such as the introduction of unleaded fuel for private vehicles and compressed natural gas for public transport, and privatisation of the frayed power distribution network.

Most important, she challenged the widespread cynicism and imparted instead a hope for the future and pride in the city. Dikshit’s success in Delhi holds out an object lesson. She managed to throw up a popular and powerful political leadership despite the overbearing presence of the Central government and cynical Congress leaders with a one-point agenda: how to displace the chief minister.

So how did she beat back the cynics and power-grabbers? The story goes back to 1998 when the Congress came to power in the city after a long stay in the political wilderness. The party’s leadership decided that Delhi should set an example of governance. To accomplish that goal, it was important to deal with the bureaucracy and the elected leaders. A district commissioner or an MLA or an MP had no connection with specific neighbourhoods. They looked at the larger picture, not in terms of vision but for their own interests.

Neighbourhoods need civic leadership. In Delhi, the vacuum was filled by Resident Welfare Associations (RWA), voluntary bodies comprising concerned citizens who sought to ensure that their neighbourhoods had some amount of order in terms of basic civic needs such as security, garbage collection, water supply, sanitation and power supply.

The Delhi government, in a far reaching initiative, sought to empower these voluntary groups in a unique programme called Bhagidari (partnership). It has been spectacularly successful. In one fell swoop, Sheila Dikshit inducted civic-minded groups into her agenda of governance. Lots of good things have happened. But most important a dialogue has been established between the 'aam aadmi' and the government. Delhi has not become like London, Paris or New York. But the first steps have been taken as they were 150 years ago in these exemplary cities.

For Bombay, the message is clear. In the absence of enlightened civic leadership, the Shiv Sena will call the shots just as fascist political machines ruled the roost in 19th century western cities. The current Maharashtra government is an embattled coalition of opportunists and morons. The decay is there for everyone to see. The collapse is evident. It’s time for the Congress to extend its Bhagidari programme to Bombay while they still have a say in the state.

This column appeared in DNA, August 30, 2005

http://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/report_urban-renewal-politics_739

My DNA columns, 2005-2008

http://www.dnaindia.com/authors/rajiv-desai?page1

The Scofflaw Conundrum

So I am driving down the broad, new Mehrauli-Gurgaon Road that is the capital city’s pride and joy. There’s this high-end Mercedes pointed the wrong way in my lane. It’s been stopped by a policeman and the driver is on his cell phone. I stop my car and tell the officer he should get the car off the road and issue a ticket for going the wrong way, northbound on a southbound carriageway. The policeman tells me: “I have stopped him but he is calling his boss to pull strings.”

He was doing what he can without much success. The phone call may have called him off. Given there is just one for policeman for nearly 800 citizens and three for every VIP, there’s not much the police can do. Their job is to smooth the way for VIPs in the chaos of Delhi. We have to lump it.

Meanwhile there is all kind of mayhem on the newly built road. Cars are zipping past, oblivious of the speed limit; others are making all manner of illegal lane changes and turns; as for the other vehicles including motorbikes and rickshaws, transit buses and the newly-introduced “Grameen Seva” shared taxis (they are rickety contraptions with engines not much larger than a lawn mower but with cramped accommodation for nearly 10 passengers), they drive on the road without any concern for safety or rules.

Actually where we live, on the capital’s outskirts, the landscape has changed dramatically in the past year, with the Metro making inroads. There are fancy stations (infested with street vendors), steel-and-glass bus stops (uglified by handbills) and high-tech street lights (which have never been lit because of a turf war between the National Highway Authority of India that built the road and the Public Works Department of Delhi that is in charge of lighting).

The entire modern infrastructure that was supposed to uplift our lives has done little to improve the civic experience. The spanking new and wide road is now a market with fruit sellers, chaat carts, illegally parked cars and lunatic drivers. Chaos rules and you feel you’ve landed in a battlefield of crazed individuals, ineffectual police and poor planning. It is as though modernity has been aborted by the pre-modern economy.

Above all, you get the feeling that putting modern amenities in the hands of neanderthal civic officials and junglee citizens is a bad idea that has metastasized into a life-threatening situation, never mind enhancing the quality of life.

The narrow road that leads from the iconic MG Road to my house is an example of the ineptitude and criminal neglect of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, which is probably the most corrupt organization on Earth. The only way to describe it is to resort to Hindu mythology: it combines the evil machinations of Ravana and the wicked insidiousness of the Kauravas. 

It is a road I have fought to better with some amount of luck because of the backing of the political leadership. There are superficial improvements but the road still becomes a morass of sewage water and gigantic potholes during the monsoon.

Despite all the new accouterments of modernity, commuting in Delhi is a nightmare. After all, no matter how slick you make the monkey cages in zoos, the inhabitants will still be all over it. In the end, through behavioral modification, primates can be taught to use their new facilities.

But how do you deal with humans, who have mutated into scofflaws over the sorry history of this much-conquered place?

Delhi’s scofflaw citizens are the archetype of a culture that is steeped in mythology, feudalism, ideology, elitism (think Lutyens Delhi) and rampant narcissism. Their gruff and scruffy ways are the despair of citizens whose lives are vandalized by their behavior.

I have lived in the capital for two decades. We live in a bubble suffused with the warmth of family and good friends. Our granddaughter was born here, the first ever in generations of my wife’s and my family.

Plus, the city has an enlightened political leadership under the aegis of a three-term chief minister, who battles constantly with civic agencies that are not really under her control. The only reason Delhi has not degenerated into a Hobbesian mess is because Sheila Dikshit has held fort against the barbarians.

In the interim, infrastructure has improved exponentially but civic life has taken a dive. The metro, the fancy buses, the bus stops, the new roads…all come to naught because of the behavior of scofflaws; 21^st century civic amenities are wasted on them.

It hits civil people, and they may well be a majority, between the eyes: modern infrastructure, poorly implemented by the corrupt and inept civic agencies and abused and vandalized by scofflaw citizens.

Delhi’s ugly reality is the outcome of years of feudalism, colonialism, refugeeism, socialism and today’s ersatz culture that mixes mythology, superstition, mercantilism and amorality. Delhi has no modern urban roots; it has, for sure, a pre-modern urban idiom derived from the Mughals, which has been raped and pillaged by the refugee culture that took hold after Partition.

The capital city’s citizens are held hostage to scofflaws, who drive insanely, urinate in public, deface public property, molest women and create mayhem in public spaces.

Delhi is a city on the boil. Unless the capital can muster the political will and the police resources to fight this scourge, the scofflaws will turn it into a moffusil town. It’s already happening on the city’s edges.

This article appears on the Times of India website.

http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/capital-letter/entry/the-scofflaw-conundrum

Bombay Journal 3

Street of Dreams

On a recent swing through Bombay, I came face-to-face with my past. First, on the way to the St Xavier’s College campus to meet an old friend, I passed the Raj Mahal restaurant on Kalbadevi Road. My mother took me there one day in 1956, June 8, when I was admitted to the nearby and much coveted St Xavier’s High School. As we drove past it, I could almost taste the sense of accomplishment and the masala dosa and sweet lassi I had with my mother. Wind forward to 2012, as I drove past the restaurant; I was agog to see it:  It is still there, middle class and all, 56 years later!

On the way back north, the chauffeur took me past Victoria Terminus (now perforce called CST because of the thugs who run Bombay) onto the elevated road that takes you past Crawford Market (the thugs have renamed it Mahatma Phule Market) and Mohammed Ali Road, past the JJ Hospital and got off at Victoria Garden Road and into Byculla Bridge, a once-genteel neighborhood where I grew up in the shadow of Christ Church School.

We drove through Christ Church Lane, where I lived as a pre-teen and commuted on the weekend with friends to our family home in Juhu Beach to enjoy the Goa-like ambience. The Lane was an eye opener. Living there, I came to appreciate the sheer cultural diversity of India: living among Goans and Anglo-Indians, Bohras and Jews, Muslims and Parsis; I also learned how it felt to belong to a minority: Hindu, Gujarati, vegetarian.

Driving through Christ Church Lane, I saw that it is not as wide as I imagined.  With cars parked on both sides, it was a bit of a struggle driving through. The buildings of my childhood: Court Royal, Lobo Mansion, Blue Haven and what have you are still there; they look somewhat weatherworn. Around the corner on Victoria Garden Road, the storefront Linnet Tailor still stands after all these years. This was the establishment a little boy badgered for delivery of his clothes within 24 hours of being measured up.

It was like a riding in a time machine. This pre-teen boy was leading me through this street of dreams. I was a visitor from the future being led by the little boy through the clouds of a past that shaped my worldview: to nurture diversity, to embrace cosmopolitanism.

My pre-teen guide from the past reminded me that every evening, hormonal young teenagers strutted through the Lane; eyeing the gorgeous “dames” the Lane was famous for. There was a guy, spitting image of Elvis, who would strut and fret his hour upon the Lane, with girls swooning all over him. In my mind’s eye, I caught a glimpse of a little boy, in his bathroom, wetting his hair trying to swirl up the trademark Elvis pompadour.

The traveler from the future could envision also the same little boy, his companion on the journey through time: perched dreamily in his balcony, listening to the troubadour family that came to sing Friday nights. The song that touched him was Tony Brent’s “Little Serenade” and the green-eyed teenage daughter. “Just a little street down in Portofino,” they sang. An Anglo-Indian, Brent grew up and lived in an apartment house on the tree-shaded Spence Road, just south of the Lane. Though he left India for England a decade before I lived there, he was a legend and his songs were fiercely popular.

In Christ Church Lane those days, there was a sense of urbane sophistication and above all, a feeling there could be no better place than this Bombay. As a pre-teen, the little boy fantasized about cricket but also about football and athletics, Hollywood films, Goa and Gorai. He was, however, always on the margins; restricted in diet and Gujarati conservatism.

These memories surfaced as I drove through Christ Church Lane, the venue of my renaissance. It was as if the little boy from the 1950s took me by my hand and helped me relive a time when my mind opened up. The kid got me all emotional; he reminded me of its beautiful girls, its rock and roll, and its diversity.

In America, in the early 1970s, I used to identify with a monster-hit television show called “Happy Days.”  My friend David Swanson was always befuddled. “How does that work?” he asked me. “It depicts a typical American suburban experience.” It was difficult for me to explain. “Just believe it; for me, the show works because it reminds me of Christ Church Lane,” I would tell him. It wasn’t just the incipient rock-and-roll music of the time but also a shared middle class heritage of work and achievement, play and leisure.

The trouble with memories in India is that the present-day situation mostly always turns out to be grim, nothing like what you remember. In America, nostalgia is treasured and old things are not just preserved but made better. In 2008, citizens of Milwaukee gathered to applaud the unveiling of the bust of “Fonzie,” an unforgettable character in “Happy Days,” which was based in the city’s golden suburbs of the 1950s. Wouldn't it be wonderful if residents of Byculla Bridge did the same for Tony Brent?

And so I drove through the street of dreams with the little kid, who liked to sing in his tuneless monotone Elvis’ “Jailhouse Rock,” pant after the gorgeous girls in the Lane and listen to “Binaca Geet Mala” with its Hindi film tunes in addition to the Binaca “Hit Parade.”  Those pre-Beatles-era songs still remain with me; I married a gorgeous Goan girl (who didn’t live in the Lane but hey, nobody’s perfect) and I troll the net to find the Binaca shows (no luck yet).

Soon we turned onto Clare Road (wonder what the thugs call it now?), west of the Lane. As the car got swallowed up in traffic headed north, the little kid disappeared into the haunting memories of Christ Church Lane and I returned to the dreary ordinariness of 21^st century Bombay.

###


A version of this article appears on The Times of India website.
http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/capital-letter/entry/bombay-journal-street-of-dream

Bombay Journal 2

The Irresistible Charm of the Siren City

Delhi’s Terminal 3 reflects the city’s crude unease with modernity; Bombay’s airport has the casual ease of a city used to egalitarian urban life. When you land in Bombay, you feel part of the human driving force that creates jobs, provides entertainment, choices of lifestyles and the pulsating beat of urbanity. I may be biased but this is the city where I grew up, using public transport, walking the streets, comfortable in my middle class existence.

It was only when the division took place of the erstwhile Bombay state into Gujarat and Maharashtra and I was yanked from my predictable and inclusive middle class existence, I realized that that there are Gujarati and Marathi, Hindu and Muslim, Brahmin and others, rich and poor. I sort of knew that but that was when I understood that these diversities can be used for political gain.

Today, the entire political conversation is built on these divides. All of India is riven with differences. Bombay, however, still retains the streak of egalitarianism.  There is incredible wealth; abject poverty; but the beat goes on like it did when I was growing up here. The Siren City boasts a sophistication that is far removed from Delhi’s bastard culture of privilege and braggadocio. Yes, it is my city that the brigands of the various senas are bent on destroying. Bombay’s heritage of sophisticated cosmopolitanism is threatened.

Unlike Delhi, where citizens are thugs; in Bombay, thugs hold citizens to ransom. On a recent trip, I was stuck in heavy traffic on the Worli Causeway (soon to be renamed Chhatrapati Shivaji Causeway by the thugs?) and we inched along. I was struck by the fact that no one tried to weave through traffic or honk.

I was on my way to meet my friend Father Lawrie Ferrao, one of my oldest friends. He is the director of the highly-regarded Xavier Institute of Communication. I first met Lawrie in 1958 in Hilda Pimenta’s fifth standard class at St Xavier’s High School in Dhobi Talao. I was a forgettable kid in the school that boasted many students who went on to make their mark in the world: the most prominent being Sunil Gavaskar. There were others not quite as publicly acclaimed but stars in their own right in various fields: space science, mathematics, anthropology, petroleum, journalism, law, business and what have you.

When I finished with the school in 1965, I lost touch with Lawrie and only re-established contact with him at a reunion of the class of 1965 in January 2008. Taken aback that he was a Jesuit priest and then the principal of St Stanislaus in Bandra, I spent a lot of time with him at the meet. In the event, he was the priest who conducted the service at my daughter’s wedding in St Elizabeth Church in Ucassaim, Goa, our other home. Thus, we re-established our friendship

We spent a few hours together, not just reliving the old times but discussing various issues including the state-of-the-art of communications education and urban governance and everything else over lunch at the highly-overrated Khyber Restaurant in Kala Ghoda.

The previous night I had dinner with my friends Almona and Sidharth Bhatia. She is the publisher of GQ in India and Sid has just written a fabulous book called Cinema Moderne: The Navketan Story. We talked late into the evening about many things but mainly about Dev Anand and how he represented modernity and hope in an India shackled by socialist dogma and Gandhian claptrap about village republics

Note: For my friends who, like me, hold Gandhi in high esteem. Gandhi was a post modern thinker; his ideas were seminal and far ahead of his time. However, the idea of a self sufficient village presumes full literacy and civic awareness.  He preached civil disobedience and said nary a word about free and compulsory primary education.

Coming back to my Bombay experience, it is now increasingly clear that the political battle is between those who endorse Bombay’s cosmopolitan character and the thugs, who would drag the city into moffusil obscurity. Call it Bombay versus Mumbai. The latter seem to be winning by sheer muscle.

And so Bombay is a conundrum: you see in it hope for India’s future and you despair that is held hostage by thugs. What happens in Bombay over the years will determine whether India will live up to its promise as player on the world stage; or will slide into the chaos of a fourth world country.

Finally, an explanation on why I call Bombay the “Siren City.”  It is an island; it is seductive in its decrepit charm; yet it draws people even though they may end up on the rocks. The people who have always lived there or consider it home have an Odyssean worldview:  “all that comes to pass on the fertile earth, we know it all!”

Bombay being Bombay, I have to end this with a line written by Majrooh Sultanpuri and sung by Mohammed Rafi: “Yeh hai Bombay meri jaan.” Mumbai just doesn't work in that song. Never mind it was a rip-off of an American folk ballad called “My Darling Clementine.”

Bombay Journal

Deja Vu All Over Again…

Three friends, 45 years later, sit in a palatial Khar apartment in this siren city, enjoying the cocktail hour. Dinner is a couple of hours away. This is the first time that I can remember that Yogi, Mirchi and I have sat together since our Baroda days. Sure, we’ve met en famille…in Bombay, in New York, in New Jersey. In Baroda, we met every day, largely because we were roommates at different times. So this evening was special.

In the course of the evening, we exchanged a few desultory comments about Baroda and the people we knew then. Mostly the conversation was about today and things happening in our lives. Mirchi regaled us about his fumbles with remote controlled curtains in his bedroom; Yogi about how he has given up his crusade against honking and rash driving in Bombay; I showed them pictures of my freshly-minted granddaughter. It was wonderful to be interested in each other’s lives today and not go into a nostalgic shoosha about the good old days and what have you.

Even if I do say so myself; I am mostly the guy who makes the effort to keep in touch with old friends.  In the past few decades, I have connected with friends from the 1950s, 1960s and onward. It's been marvelous because they responded with enthusiasm. The key to sustaining renewed relationships is to eschew stuff like: "remember the time" and get with the modern day program. Most renewals have succeeded in the sense that we catch up with great eagerness from time to time; the ones that have fallen by the wayside were the ones that could not get beyond the magic of the old days.

What was remarkable about the reunion was that the nostalgia was about the established friendship, not about what we did when we were in our twenties. We were all engineering students enrolled in the Faculty of Technology at the MS University in Baroda; we were from Bombay and in love with the city. In Baroda, we were inseparable, together every day: dinner, movies, late night chai; living in a world of our own. It wasn’t always smooth; there were ups and downs. But we were young and sure to have our way.

Then the busy years went rushing by us; as the Baroda experience came to an end, we drifted apart. For more than a decade, we lost touch, making our way in the world: establishing careers, building families. The bond apparently survived. I reached out to them and they were happily receptive and over the years, we built a whole new relationship that peaked with the dinner in Bombay this week.

We laughed, ribbed each other and were comfortable together as though 45 years were a blink of the eyes. If you could rewind to Baroda, you’d see the three guys, now in their sixties, really hadn’t changed much, except they were older and definitely wiser. There was much familiar laughter and in our hearts, the dreams were still the same.

In the sixties, we defined friendship; 45 years later, we were redefining nostalgia. No syrupy memories of the past; no obsessive recall of the days gone but robust conversations about today, secure in the feeling that our friendship had withstood the test of time. There was no looking back, only hope we could do this again whenever we had the chance. Our lives are different but the bonds hold firm. We don’t really need to see each other every day; just to get together every opportunity we can get.

It really doesn’t get better than this. My trip in life is to link up with old friends, to establish new ties based on old camaraderie. In that, I am the luckiest person in the world: reviving old friendships is to renew life and to keep you young and fun loving. On that score alone, I may have a ticket to the place where angels play harps and it is always springtime. That evening in Bombay, it felt like I was there already.

Something In the Way She Smiles...

A Glimpse of Immortality

Yeah, yeah, we’ve all heard that: a guy who gushes about his grandchild. This is different.

I had the most amazing opportunity of spending four days with my granddaughter Kiara at our house, Imagine, in Goa. It rang true to its name. Imagine: Goa had a cool Spring; even in March, people wanted wraps sitting out on our patio; unusual weather to herald Kiara’s first trip to Goa. Imagine: she is just two months old.

Her presence at Imagine blew away my routine: newspapers, tea, bread and cheese, figs and pineapples for breakfast. The papers were left unread and between bites of “poi” (fabulous Goan bread) laden with butter, goat cheese and blueberry jam, I sat in the patio with her. Granddad or whatever, I am her personal physical trainer, working her arms and legs, lifting her up and down, turning her side to side, getting her in training for whenever Olympics.

She seemed to love it. Her smile was to die for. And that sort of works: when the sixties refer not to the Beatles generation  but to the candles on your birthday cake.

The deal is everyone smiles with their eyes. Kiara’s bright black eyes were fascinating. Shining like full-beam headlights, they dazzled me. I kept staring at them and she looked back unblinking. “Dude,” her eyes seemed to say, “Look into my eyes. I am your glimpse of immortality.”

Whoa! That’s intense coming from a child that is younger than the vintage of the plonk they serve as Indian wines. I stared harder. And in them, I saw several films, only one of which I could understand.

This was the story of a guy born in Surat, grew up in Bombay and made his home in Chicago, where one cold, snowy winter his daughter (Kiara’s mother) was born. After a complimentary steak and champagne dinner in my wife’s hospital room, we brought the baby back next day to our condo in Oak Park and doted on her and continue to do so three decades later.

Hanging with Kiara on our patio in the cool of a Goa morning, I thought of every morning in Chicago, horsing around with her mother and she also smiled. Months later, the baby, at the smallest provocation, laughed like a certified lunatic and we have a cassette (remember those?) of her in hysterical gales of laughter. We hope to present that to Kiara when she is older; which is why I am saving my old school but slick Nakamichi cassette player.

When our daughters were born, we were too busy to think philosophy. We had to attend to them and love them; no time for bigger issues. As a grandparent, and mostly because I am so much older, I can look into Kiara’s eyes and see a continuity, once removed. It sounds weird but I see in her eyes an assurance that my life has not just been wasted making a living. Her look tells me: “Yo, 20^th century man, you did well!”

In my mind, she is the Nobel Prize my daughter awarded me.

A Conversation with My Granddaughter

Me: Yo Kiara, wassup.

Kiara: (disappointed look)

Me: You must have heard about Jack and Jill?

She: (incoherent)

Me: They were the ones that went up the hill…

She: (incoherent)

Me: Jack fell down and broke his crown…

She: (incoherent)

Me: And Jill came tumbling after

She: (incoherent)

Me: Dang, Sweetie, it’s a Cliff Richard song.

She: (incoherent)

Me: Doe a deer, a female deer…

She: (incoherent)

Me: Ray, a drop of golden sun…

She: (incoherent)

Me: Jeez kid, what does it take to get you interested?

She: (raspberry)

Me: Ok cool, I got a response; you’re all there, baby.

She: (blank stare)

Me: Ok, how about this?

 She: (blank stare)

Me: (a random boney m song)

She: (farts and poops)

(Cleanup)

Me: So yo, you like the Beatles?

She: (smiles)

Me: If there’s anything that you want, if there’s anything I can do…

Pia (her mother): Yep, Dad, a baby Ipad for her.

Me: (sigh!)

To My Newborn Granddaughter

Dear Kiara,

You will get to know me eventually, Right now; you are focused on your mother, my daughter. When your Mom learned to stand up, somewhat shakily, she held on to my knee and rocked, listening to the Beatles. I loved your Mom when she was growing up and my life revolved around her. She laughed a lot and I have a cassette that captures her near lunatic laughter. But you will never know what a cassette is

While you spend your early days feeding and sleeping, understand please you have changed our world. Nothing is more important in my life than to spend an hour watching you sleep or to hassle you when you are awake. I must confess, much as I love you like there was no tomorrow, I am not a big fan of your farts and your poop. Your Mom did that too and I had no choice but to deal with it

When your Mom was in my arms, just a few days after John Lennon was murdered, I sang to her the song, Vaishnava Jan,  Mohandas Gandhi made famous. The lyrics were in Gujarati and talked about being a good person: be compassionate, never talk ill about anyone, don’t be vain, et cetera. You will be proud to know that Narasinh Mehta, who wrote the song more than 600 years ago is an ancestor of yours

You should also be thrilled to know that on your grandmother’s side, there were musicians in the 1950s and the 1960s that popularized jazz and rock through Hindi films. On your grandfather’s side, there were great Indian classical musicians and dancers and film stars. I will tell you about them when you grow up. We also have in our family great writers, scientists and people who have made names in business the world over.

On your father’s side there are equally accomplished people: entrepreneurs, architects, artists, professionals and what have you; not to mention one of the most famous actresses in Bollywood. Your Dad will tell you about them.

Your grandmother is widely renowned as a good cook and choral singer. She will teach you the intricacies of piano and classical singing and also all manner of alternative living. Everyone loves her, not just me. Your grandfather, as in me, will introduce you to the joys of reading and writing and activism. I am also happy to teach you swear words but I don’t think that will go down well with the clan on both sides.

Your Mom has a sister you will adore and love mindlessly; she will teach you the joys of casual sophistication. She will snow you with her lovable personality and her ability to handle the world with biting sarcasm and humor. Listen to her; she has a way in the world that I admire; plus she used to live in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Need I say more?

Finally, a word about your Mom: apart from being the most organized person in the family, she is a softie and a traditionalist. I love her and have been close to her since I first held her with as a newborn with guck all over her. She is a superstar..

We love ya and welcome you into both families. You are a superstar plus.

With immeasurable love,

Your Granddad..

PS Just call me “Sir.”

Tilting at windmills - Hindustan Times

Tilting at windmills - Hindustan Times

Power, Not Principles

Anti-Congressism is the common plank of those motivated by short-term political gain.


Peeling the onion of political ideology in India is an assault on reason. You have Hindutva rabble-rousers who held sway from 1998 to 2004. Then there is the intellectually bankrupt Left that met its Waterloo on the India-US strategic partnership agreement. Sitting on opposition benches, their one-point agenda is to defeat – which is difficult – or cause problems – which is easy – for the Congress. It is a matter of wonder how closely these two so-called inimical forces, the BJP and the Left, have combined time and again to oppose the Congress for short term political gain. 

There are also 1960s-style anarchic groups that include the Anna Hazare autocratic clique and Mamata Banerjee’s socially and intellectually challenged Trinamool Congress. Plunk into the mix the personality cults of Mayawati; the dynastic set-up of Mulayam Singh Yadav, Karunanidhi and Naveen Patnaik; the slippery appeal of Jayalalithaa and the holier-than-thou stance of Nitish Kumar. These are mercenary formations that will sway whichever way the wind blows, depending on the political advantage they can derive. 

It is not clear what any of these groups stand for except opposition to the Congress. In 1974, the great anarch Jayaprakash Narayan talked of “total revolution” and called on the army to revolt against the Indira Gandhi government; today Anna has subverted his fight against corruption into an anti-Congress political movement. Talk about deja vu. 

The foolishness of the Anna band of civil society buccaneers was exposed when the moving spirit, Arvind Kejriwal, was forced to issue a statement that they are not anti-Congress. Earlier, when cornered by thinking people on a television show, he said that India’s muchadmired parliamentary democracy is a fraud. Such increasingly shrill utterances suggest he is completely out of depth on the national stage. 

Meanwhile, BJP leader L K Advani led a rath yatra against money in Swiss banks in a nonetoo-subtle bid to cash in on Anna’s storm in a teacup against corruption. Of classic RSS vintage, he believes no one remembers his other 1990 Ram temple effort which led to communal riots. So where is the “glorious” temple he promised? He served as home minister and deputy prime minister for the six years the BJP-led coalition was in power. Advani’s confusion was complete when he went to Karachi and lauded Mohammed Ali Jinnah as a secular leader. 

There are many ideological fig leafs that political formations wear in their relentless grasp for power: socialism, casteism, social justice, identity, chauvinism, Hinduism. Scratch the surface and it all turns out to be an anti-Congress position. As such, political analysis in India is best conducted on a dyadic presumption: there is the Congress and there is everyone else. 

So let’s look at the Congress record. It has been the default option for the electorate. In the past quarter century, it suffered seminal defeats in the elections of 1989 and 1996. In each case, it was voted out of power on allegations of corruption. Each time, a coalition of parties was hastily put together that stood for nothing except opposition to the Congress. In both those defeats, any objective analyst could conclude the Congress lost because its governments undertook significant reforms that hurt the status quo. 

In 1989, an agglomeration of forces came together to restore the status quo of inequity and discrimination that Rajiv Gandhi had challenged. The motley crew of political parties that formed the opposition put together a makeshift government that did not last the full term; nor did they pursue the charges of corruption that brought them to power. 

In the ensuing decade, the BJP’s unbridled appeal to communalism brought it to power: first, for 13 days in 1996; then in two desperate coalitions in 1998 and 1999. The saffron dispensation lasted until 2004 and was then showed the door because of its misplaced nationalism that saw India conduct nuclear tests that were replayed tit-for-tat by Pakistan and because of its insensitive “India Shining” hype. 

Since then, the Congress has held sway. The key difference is the Congress’s approach to social harmony and economic development: the phrase “inclusive development” was introduced to the political vocabulary. In the interim, India, warts and all, grew to be a big player in the global dialogue. Most important, economic growth was accompanied by the largest-ever reduction in poverty. Today, thanks largely to the growth of the middle class, the Indian voice is heard in world forums. 

Unmindful of these achievements, the anti-Congress brigade has spread several falsehoods: the prime minister is opposed by Congress president Sonia Gandhi; Manmohan Singh is weak; Sonia is the real power. 

The truth is different: both Singh and Sonia are on the same page as they have always been. There has been in the history of the Congress no better combination. The former pushes reform in foreign and economic policy; the latter is the conscience to ensure there is a local sensitivity to these reforms. That is the operational definition of “inclusive growth”. 

It’s ironic that the anti-Congress formations should denigrate both leaders. Singh is a highly respected economist who forsook academic achievement to serve the country first as a bureaucrat, then as finance minister and prime minister. Sonia, who adopted this country as her home, foreswore the office of prime minister in 2004 and became the conscience of the government. 

The writer is a public affairs commentator.

Left and Right against the Centre


This article appeared in The Times of India on January 10, 2012.

Link:

http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Scripting/ArticleWin.asp?From=Archive&Source=Page&Skin=TOINEW&BaseHref=CAP/2012/01/10&PageLabel=14&EntityId=Ar01400&ViewMode=HTML