Working Class Hero

The Peanuts Mastermind

I have always wanted to appear on the Mastermind show with Peanuts as my Mastermind. As this will never happen, here's my own 10 question round.

1. What is two times two?

2. What do real alligators never do?

3. Who owned Snoopy before Charlie Brown brought him home from the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm?

4. What did Andrew Wyeth's work replace?

5. What do you wear if you have amblyopia?

6. Happiness Ist Ein Kleine Kaput ___________?

7. What color is the security blanket?

8. Rerun prefers drawing what to flowers?

9. Kite eating trees have soft stomachs. True/ False?

10. What does the Red Haired Girl do to her pencil?

Song for Winners
You are a hero now
Everyone loves you
Your body is toned
Your hairline wavy
And your smile a glow

They hang by your words
Laugh at your jokes
(the women find them hot)
They wish they were you

You can do great feats
Like holding your breath
For ninety nine seconds
You make them take odds
In the washroom there
And hope they do lose the bet
To get into your bed

You can pose for the photograph
And drive a fast car
You are so good at it for sure
Whatever it is you do

They want to know your secret
And you can give it all away
You pretend like its nothing
You are freezing into a smile

Footnotes to Mythology

I don't know how many people listen to albums in their entirety these days.
Surely, the concept of an 'album' barely exists in the age of play lists.

Being a cassette-era relic, I am yet to get around to even downloading music ...free or illegally. I refuse to go the i-tunes way because, for me, the album-experience is incomplete without a sheet of printed paper in my hands.

I still believe in liner notes and album art. I believe in sides A/ B and concept albums.

Anyways, while listening recently to Pearl Jam's self titled album and its magnificent album-ender, "Inside Job", I started thinking up my list of great album-enders.

What I call a great album ender:A great album enters mythology only when it goes from great song to great song and ends with an unbelievable orgasm. (Note: If the album is one sustained orgasm the best end it can have is a dreamy finish.)

What is important, though, is this: A great album ender can be enjoyed alone (on a play list) but you appreciate it best only when it is reached via the journey of the album's entirety.

Here's my list:
A Day in the life (just about edging out the B side of Abbey Road)

Moonlight Mile

The Rock/Love rain on me

Thorn Tree in the Garden

When the Levee Breaks

Desolation Row

The End

Eclipse

Bohemian Rhapsody

Rock 'n' Roll Suicide

Locomotive Breath

Slim Slow Slider

Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)

Release

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Talking about downloading albums, I do hope you have visited Radio head's website of late. If you haven't read this first!

Moon Bathing
After several months of inactivity, pointless hard work and general restlessness, I decided to bring down the hung boots and go for a trek with our old friend Akshay (The Comrade) Gupta
Being completely cut off from the scene for more than a year now, I was glad to let the Comrade work out the trekking route, the way to get there and all the minor details except the booking of my tickets.
Through a rather stunning move from the Mothers Inc, which has been having quite a field day in these troubled times, Bala was plonked in quite unwittingly as the third member for this great expedition
If you ever want to go on the same expedition here’s a useful map

We drove from Delhi to Shimla on Day one through some amazing 4 way “express” lanes, great dollops of makhan on several paranthas, Kurukshetra and mild headaches after 4 hours of night driving up the mountains
Day two was the drive through a wide array of four wheeled wonders- bull dozers, cranes, several cars, trucks and one armored vehicle through a road left undone by a Chinese company.
The road to Rohru needs completion badly to make the trekking route as popular as its other Himachal cousins- but it’s adequately motor able nevertheless
At Rohru, a dusty, polluted, buzzing town, that belies the beauty which lies just a kilometer ahead of it, one will need a place to stay – we recommend River View Hotel (Rs. 300/- per night) , who can also arrange avoidable expensive treks.
At Rohru, our savior and guide was a gentleman from the “trade” thanks to some deft salesmanship and corporate leadership by yours truly.

These gentlemen, as is unique to the trade, showered our unholy trio with hospitality we were frankly quite unworthy of- introducing us to several guides and trekking options in a town where the concept sounded quite hilarious to many
“An why would you drive all the way to Delhi so that you can walk 30 kms up hill?” was one of the few existential questions shot at us by the guffawing helpful gentlemen

Day one of Trek:
Drive up to the village of Dharmwari, 20 km from Rohru, along the banks of the River Pabbar.
Contact the well experienced and yet quite young Mr Pankaj Neigi, trained at the Mountaineering Course at Darjeeling (as was The Comrade) and the porter of his choice
Stock up on Maggi, rice, dal, masala, salt (we forgot that!) and some candies and park your car in the unlikely zone offered by Pankaj Neigi’s uncle/shop keeper
Take a Jeep ride to the closest motor able path to the village Janglik
Start the trek
Cross a sheep’s bridge across the Pabbar on the way up, through huge sheep and goat traffic jams , an act that might sink the bravest in an existential quandry
Climb steadily up for one more hour to reach Janglik
At Janglik rent your tents (250 a day) and your sleeping bags and resume the trek
Do indulge the request for photographs the numerous kids of the village
Reach an abandoned Gujjar hut after another 2-2.5 hour trek, pitch your tents in the wilderness and wonder at the number of stars a clear sky can reveal
Chop enough firewood from the nearby woods to ensure you can cook some food and keep your rear end warm as the temperatures dip to zero
Make sure you get your salt or else cook the dal in Maggi masala (TM to loonatix.com) and get yourself into a sleeping bag faster than you can say frozen balls
Day two of the Trek:
Wonder at the frozen bottle of water you left outside the tent
Disappear behind the bushes
Have sweetened rice for breakfast
Trek for an hour through some scenic woods and meadows
Reach campsite two in a meadow infested with wild horses and buffaloes
Pitch tents and resume trek
Four hours on through more woods, meadows and some climbing along the Pabbar leads to the seven lakes of Chandra Nahaan
Have the packed lunch i.e. Maggi noodles in a pressure cooker for Lunch
Trudge back to the camp to realize that you have a snow peaked mountain just a kilometer over your head
Chop more firewood for the kitchen and general well being
Sleep out to warm the cold bones in some sun light, soothed by the sounds of gentle mastication of the grass by nearby buffaloes

Day 3 of Trek:
Go all the way back to Janglik and realize that you really have walked up quite a bit
Watch Bala leap and stroll like a mountain goat in the hope that the entire thing was finally coming to an end
The Mountain goat:

Watch Bala struggle again

The struggle:

Marvel at great feats and miracles by the Grey Wizard
Reach Rohru back at around six in the evening
Do your round of thanking the various people who sniggered, advised and accommodated weird requests from The Comrade for warm underwear

Day 4 of the Trek:
Drive down to Delhi from 9 am to 3 am singing along to various Stones, Doors and Beatles Remasters albums

The Happiest days of our Lives

".. The newspaper stories were like bad dreams to us, bad dreams dreamt by others. How awful, we would say, and they were, but they were awful without being believable. They were too melodramatic, they had a dimension that was not the dimension of our lives. We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edge of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories."

From The Handmaid's Tale

Arthur & George

On George

Did xenophobia enter main stream taboo status only after WW 2?

From the Fear of Muslims to Neo Nazis beating up Indians- so many instances pop up now in the media fairgrounds and bask in the sunshine of public dissent and opinion.

Racism of course, will continue as long as there are dark and pale humans around and as long as they both continue to procreate.

I do not know of many examples of well publicized racism in the pre world war era.

All of colonialism was indeed racist and hence I assume it was part of the accepted scheme of things. After all, when a Gujarati got thrown out of a train in Pietermaritzburg for 'darker' reasons, in the pre-war times, the news came to the 'civilized' world almost a century later, as the first scene in a Hollywood blockbuster.
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Barnes' depiction of George is so much more beautiful than all the 'tales of displacement' being churned out every other year for Booker that and Pulitzer this by our women writers.

Maybe that's the difference between hype and art.

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On Arthur

Like everybody else I believe in Holmes…and Watson. The cocaine, the violin, the most quotable of eccentric lines, the women (or the lack of) and the impossible chivalry…life’s so much better when we believe that Holmes did exist.

Along comes along Sir Arthur full of cricket and waxed moustache, championing Spiritism, playing the consulting detective, stewing in Victorian sexual paranoia…Holmes and Watson did indeed exist!

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Arthur & George

The days when Sir Arthur played cricket were so different- his cricket is full of English snobbery, impossible Victorian chivalry and stiffness, with corseted ladies watching some very confused men, from sun drenched boundaries.

W G Grace c Storer b Conan Doyle 110

Arthur’s game has now been completely usurped by George’s people- it has been imbued with their boisterous colourful chaotic culture. How would Sir Arthur react to that?

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Sir Arthur’s obsession with Spiritism is funny yet…disturbing. A hall crowded with thousands of people waiting for Sir Arthur’s séance appearance reminded me of Herge


I now understand now, what Herge seems to be poking fun at.

All of Europe, before the war, seems to have been obsessed with the business of Spiritism and Clairvoyance...

Not just Sir Arthur, but almost a good fraction of the world was searching for a way to conquer death. They seemed to believe that if turn of the century science could suddenly throw in so many miracles at the most breath taking regularity, death would be explained away soon too.

After the death of 100 million people in just some six years- I think our race has given up on the what-after-death issue- at least for a while.

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On Arthur

I wonder what Sir Arthur would have to tell the new-age terrorists

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Holy Shark Repellent Batspray Batman!

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?

Bean me up!

-Within the first five minutes of my auto voyage into Bangalore, as a settler, I was stalled at an endless traffic jam. The driver of the car beside me took out a tiffin box and shoveled spoonfuls of upma into his mouth. An over-full drain relentlessly spilled out its contents on the other side of the road
-Ten hours later,I went out into the market to get myself the essential settler’s kit of mattress-bucket-mug-pillow. I thought I would be the only one looking for stuff like that…I spotted at least five more. Every day I spot at least one person on the street with a tub/bucket/mattress

-My home is right next to a mall. It takes me five minutes to cross the 10 m wide road
over to the mall (any given day, any given time)

-You can find Harry Potter, The World is Flat and The Google Story with every road side vendor selling pirated literature

-You pay 10 months advance on your house-rent, no matter what the degree of resemblance the apartment might share with a rat-hole

-The probability of you spotting a ‘pirated DVD” platform vendor is one ( anywhere you go)

-In Bangalore you have 15 options for Italian food, 5 for Greek, 10 for “Mediterranean”…Plus some 20 for “Boutique”, 10 for “Fusion”…

-Many auto drivers are of the prototype “the Lone Ranger”- they would rather explore this wide world on their own. Some are enlightened-many self-actualized

-Everyone knows what a Sangria is and also where the next party (serving free flavored vodka shots to the women) is happening

-The first time I visited Bangalore alone I was in love. That was almost ten years ago

Death of a Salesman

Revisiting works I read as an adolescent seems to be taking up most of my 'book time' these days, but the returns are always rewarding.
When I first read the play I must have been 18...I found it very sad and I couldn't stop wondering why someone would be so full of angst that he hasn't made much money (those were the days of lost ideals you see...)

I am not sure how many of my friends at college (where I was at 18) understood it either, where it was even staged as a semester-play ( in Hindi as "Ek Sapney ki Maut"?)... Somebody must have I guess, if they were moved enough to stage an almost professional version of the play... but the chap who played Biff Loman went on to become a MBA in real life...

Now I read it as a Salesman myself...

The portrait of the Salesman as a man who has believed his own advertisement is a little off-target (having been written by an intellectual with a third-person view) but his struggle with failure seems so true.

Locked in with a society which would never admit its failures, the Salesman struggles to keep himself afloat in a sea of lies that he hopes to sell to the world and to himself. His only ambition is acceptance into a mythical realm of winners,which he hopes he could grasp by the successful sale of lies...

But the very act of sale is a lie...to sell the lie you have to believe the lie yourself-the lie that a sale of a lie is a shot at immortality.It doesn't take much to see that there is no glory in the sale-two large pegs can tell the Salesman that...but once he is into it there is no turning back. Nor are there second chances...

The tale of the Salesman's family is worse. They inherit the lies and take the baton even as they see the lies fall apart. Their doubts will soon be blown away by the society they live in. The wife weaps cries of freedom at the grave of the Salesman on the payment of the mortgage...a sign that the race with no end is on again.

My Penguin book's introduction says that someone called the play, on it's opening night, "a time bomb under American capitalism"

This was Arthur Miller's reponse- "...or at least under the bullshit of capitalism; this pseudo life that thought to touch the clouds by standing on top of a refrigerator... waving a paid up mortgage at the Moon, victorious at last..."

Got to go now! Client on the phone!

42

Somewhere in the vicinity of 2: 30 pm of the Sunday afternoon of June 3,2007 a familiar voice called me up to announce - "I hold in my hands as I speak to you,number 21 in the series of 42 ..Arjuna in Indraloka"

It seems ages ago...

The beginning of every month, in those long ago times, entailed an evening visit to Mylapore with my grandmother. The idea was to buy a pair of bananas and a coconut and offer it up to a god -the first expenditure of the month...the month's second expenditure invariably turned out to be a book for me (through sheer pester power) These book buying expeditions took my grandmother and I to the seemingly endless numbers of magazine/devotional books/college school textbook shops of Mylapore.

I must have been around six years old when I kicked off this Amar Chitra Katha Maharbharata obsession of mine, almost by accident. I bought a book called "Enter Karna' at the magazine shop just across the Luz Terminus Bus Stand, for Rs 4.50- the entire book budget for the month (I could have borrowed some 2 Enid Blytons with a bunch of Tinkles to boot, for that much money at my 'lending library')

I kept it back but my grandmother, for once in her life, was actually ready to give me so much money because Karna happened to be her favorite character in the story. ( I later figured out that Karna has the largest female fan following in India when it comes to mythological characters...if any one remembers them anymore that is)

Like most things that I am obsessed with for a lifetime now, I hated the Amar Chitra Katha Mahabharata at the beginning. The illustration was very different from those of the friendly cartoonish Tinkle. The language was a bit abstruse at times and the style given to slipping into poetry now and then. Worse, there were so many characters I had no clue about...(Chitrangadha?)

I couldn't figure out what on earth was going on but one image haunted me ... Indra clouds out the Sky as he watches a young Arjuna perform amazing feats and the stadium is dark and foreboding- a little patch clears up in one corner of the frame and sunlight streams through, shining on one man alone- Karna... I was hooked! I was doomed now to an obsessive search that broke completely loose when Doordarshan, as if by wilful intent, started off with it's Mahabharat series that very year (or was it the next?)

Gita Devotional Books Stores1 and 2, Vijaya Textbooks, Baba Bookstore, assorted book exhibitions...all endured monthly Rs 5 budget visitations from the two of us (later upped to Rs 10 and Rs 15 as the obsession reached its peak and the search for every successive title became more and more difficult). Obviously the books were bought in no real order and any that wasn't part of the collection yet was grabbed at -so what if one was "Enter Drona" and the other "Drona in Command" (the one where he dies i.e.)?

The Maharbaharta, hence, unfolded for me as a jigsaw puzzle put together by the finding of numbered pieces in endless heaps of "Devotional Books" every month ( If not for the possession of some prior knowledge transferred during bed time stories by various people, I am sure my interpretation of the Mahabharata would have been very modern and Tarantinoesque)

So it continued for almost 4 years...I now had 41 of the 42 issues -there was one missing- 21 of 42- Arjuna in Indraloka...I tried very hard to find it...but none of my usual sources had it (one offered to get me the tamizh version)..all in vain!Anyways, I knew what happened to Arjuna in Indraloka ( he gets cursed) so I resigned myself to the futility of the search.

The 41 volumes were bound together as 4 volumes (in order) and I got to read the great story for the first time in the chronology it would want its reader to adhere to.

A little later, Amar Chitra Katha stopped bringing out Rs 5 titles and decided to reinvent itself as a glossy Rs 2o (plus?) series composed mainly of its 'bestsellers'. The Mahabharata definitely wasn't one of those... (I can't think of too many people hunting around for all 42 like I once did)...and so all hopes of getting the elusive 21st were given up with a sad finality...

Now I have all 42...20 years after!

PS1. This is ACK's website updated for the modern times with all ACK idiosyncracies intact -where dark skinned people are purple in colour and even rakshasas talk poetry

Ps2. The Mahabharata, Arjuna, Bheema...as you can see I think of these neither as Arjun, Bheem etc nor as Arjunan, Bheeman etc...don't know how many exist this way- belonging neither here nor there ('there' being a huge majority which claims cultural superiority for the 'article free' versions of these names). My love affair with these names however continues defying all cultural anchors!

Exercise in Poetry Appreciation (or) Whosurdaddy

The Name is an Incantation;
An exclamation on the face of ancient men,
Looking up at thundering skies
Whispering dark secrets from
The god to ear to the ear of the Priest,
Who wonders in mute amazement,
At the will of the demons...
His heart beating faster,
His legs drenched in the golden rains
That the Name evokes.

It is an ancient secret, this Name;
That travels through souls in the kiss of lovers
Entwined in amorous touches.
In wide eyed dreams of unknown lights,
Like the light of the setting sun
Embraced by darkness,
As the God Queen follows
In her large wooden boat,
Sails filled with the eastern wind
Down the western abyss
Off the river, Off the sea
Off the horizon, Off the flat
End of the world,
Off the waking edge of her eternal sleep
As She follows the Sun down and down.

The black knight knows,
The Red Queen wonders
At her ancient quest
Her sacred lust;
Among visiting heroes
And snake bitten lovers...
Among shadow ghosts that once had lied
And sinned between husbands;
Moaning out loud

In the very depths of love,
Never looking back
Aided by a clue
She searches for the Name
And whispers its power...

And says it again;
Like the sound of fire
A warning for approaching death
Fearful of what dreams may come
At the misty headed glimpse
Of the cavernous dark
Sticky black pit
Of after-life;
Like the mouth of a monster
Beneath his bed
The Name...
She says

Into ears that are far away
Hearing him breathe
Hearing the silence
Revolving around him...
Listening to the quiet stillness
Of a sleeping love
Engulfed by the illusion
And whispers...
The stillness responds
She grasps the illusion
And descends into
Comfortable sleep
Like a serpent’s tongue
In the blades of grass

“Grindhouse” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Tell your mother you were over at your friend’s house doing homework, and be sure to tell your friends at school about the severed limbs, the exploding heads and the naked you-know-whats.

More reasons to love my daily dose of NYT on the mail! Seen above is the way they end their review of the Rodriguez-Tarantino B movie tribute.

The movie might never get released here- but doesn't a movie like this beg to be seen on a pirated DVD made from a stealthy camera that is very often inflicted by dark shadows of people getting up and moving around?

That's the modern equivalent of Grindhouse movie watching isn't it?

Ironic?

Caller Tune

What happens to sentences and jokes
Word interplay and phrasings
Puns and unusual occurrences
News propagated from ear to ear
Gossip Green and Utterly Blue
Feed and static
Angst and Anxiety
What happens to Words
Unuttered
When the phone is unanswered?

Radio Gaga

Since January, I have been working as a ‘casual announcer’ for the rather quaint All India Radio, FM Rainbow, Goa.
They had advertised for RJs on their channel and I happened to hear one such announcement by chance and I applied. After auditions, written tests and the payment of a training fee I became what I had always longed to be- a government employee!

AIR, Goa is a charming old fashioned place, as laid back as the place it is in and caught in a time warp from the late 70s. Its RJs still play most of their material from LPs, the advertisements come in long twisted tapes and the top 10 artists played through the week –every week-would include such Billboard Superstars as Engelbert, Cliff Richard, Lobo, MLTR…

Program nomenclature is quite unique too-Siesta Time (I have Rjed this one!), Jazz hour, Retro Choice, A Hard Day’s Night, Mid-day Magic (and this one!)…you get the gist!

Like everything else in Goa, AIR Panaji, has precious little that is in common with the rest of the country… with the exception of an umbilical air wave connect to AIR, Delhi which they link to during cricket matches and siesta/sleep hours. They are absolutely non commercial when it comes to programming and the RJ is given complete creative freedom to play his/her material. (The reason why I get away with playing more Bowie than Blunt for the past one month)
At the same time they are stuffed with request programs and diligently hunt out every song that is requested for and play it. However Goa being Goa, the requested songs fall 99.9% of the time within a collection of around 25 albums that are kept ready in the duty room (refer to Lobo, MLTR, Engelbert …)

In this idyllic environment, some ‘demon-heads’ are slowly peeping in. There’s Ad Labs and Radio Mirchi setting up world class studios (they have more CDs than LPs!) and there are rumors of at least one more Big player coming in very soon.
These stations will be unabashedly commercial as they have always been and will in addition be ruthless, greedy and well,professional.
They have already poached on AIR’s announcers luring them in with packages these people had never dreamed of. Needless to say, some of the announcers fled straight back to AIR after a bitter experience with the new payola led economy these players were ushering into Goa. One announcer told me he found the new players ‘unethical’.
What is most ‘objectionable’ about these players is that they want full-time employees’ not casual announcers (boo!)

What does interest me though is that with so many new players what would become of the Goa radio scene. There are few locals who drive around listening to the radio and the tourists are stuck to taxis and the two-wheeled ‘pilots’ as far as travel goes and would, if in their right minds, rather party at a beach than listen to radio commercials. Maybe, a company like Adlabs would fit every taxi with a radio and tune them onto Adlabs 24*7…

The reason for the advent of these players lies in the history of FM station licensing to private players. The license obliges them to open FM stations in every A, B, C,D city in sequence. (A class includes the metros etc, while Goa is a D class city, with population less than 2 million). Now that these channels operate in all the A to C cities they Have to start off in Goa and it's euqivalents. 

Maybe, the much maligned 2011 plan for Goa,is what the likes of Adlabs are betting on- the real estate boom to get them the right consumers from nearby Mumbais, Punes and Bangalores. Everyone's yet to find out…

As far as ad revenues on radio go, FM Rainbow, Goa, struggles to make more than 20 lacs a year while even a nearby Kolhapur makes close to a crore.

Whatever their plan is AIR, Panaji is not too bothered yet. They still have the old LIC ad to play followed by the new Twist tonic water ad.

Coming up next is Cliff Richard with “Summer Holiday” requested by Maria, John and their friends and you are listening to the FM Rainbow Service of All India Radio Panaji…Stay tuned!!!