Sunday Musings 26/01/2014: A State of Mind Called Bangalore

An important part of my psyche is a state of mind called Bangalore. A quiet inward gathering that stimulates both deep rest and deep thought. An alertness that mixes cool repose with the edge of anticipation. A decade ago the city now known as Bengaluru held the promise of triggering in me this much-loved state of mind. No longer. Somewhere between the breakneck growth of the city and my own personal growth the connection between the state of mind and the city is lost. Now I look for and sometimes find the state of mind in quiet conversations with certain friends and the music of CSNY, Dylan, Blind Faith, Jethro Tull and Pink Flyod. There is also the sub-conscious triggering by a particular kind of touch, smell, sight and taste - a triggering that John Fowles - according to many the best writer of contemporary English- called the objective correlative. Apparently the world of the sub-conscious endures much longer than mere places in the world out there. Another Republic Day, another parade. Hopefully by this time next year the promise of an incipient paradigm shift in India's politics would have taken root and with it the clouds that threaten to rain on our parade would have disappeared.

Sunday Musings 19/01/14: The Empire Strikes Back!

The panjandrum of the national press and the talking heads on TV have the cudgels out for AAP. And after the initial shock, the major political formations have got their dirty tricks departments’ working day and night targeting it. But the biggest strike that threatens the AAP phenomenon is from within. Not just within the party in the shape of sundry moles like Binny but from within the consciousness of AAP’s best people. The ministers in Delhi’s state cabinet need to dig deeper to find the right response to a state of being that is ipso facto alien to them: that of being in power. Are they doing so? One would think not. Except for Kejriwal who seems to have found an angle of repose, the others seem to be floundering. History tells us that successful rebellions carry the seeds of failure within their very success that they fought so hard for. In fact this is the most potent weapon of the empire of power in its effort to crush all newcomers. The empire not only strikes back it strikes within. Whether or not AAP survives the assault, there is no doubt that AAP has already done what all successful rebellions do that is change the frame of reference. Those in power are now uneasy. They must learn this new frame of reference and those who enjoy power and pelf find learning the hardest thing to do. It is the wedding season and I have attended my fair share already. Over the past couple of years I have noticed a trend at Indian weddings that has the amateur anthropologist in me thinking. Traditionally it is the groom that comes to the wedding venue with much sound and fury accompanied by loud music, firecrackers and raucous dance by accompanying friends and relatives. Traditionally the bride waits demurely for all this circus to reach its conclusion so that she can garland the cock-a-hoop groom. This seems to be changing. Now at quite a few weddings, the bride gets her moment of glory too. After the groom’s arrival at the wedding venue he is made to cool his heels as the bride is carried to him in a colorful and somewhat noisy parade. I am told that the longer the procession, the longer the groom waits, the greater the glory of the bride. Is this a sign of the rising power of the woman even in the strata of Indian society that likes to celebrate and conduct weddings lavishly (that is 98% of the rich, the poor and everybody in between)? Or is the wedding procession of the bride just another facet of the rising macho competitiveness in Indian society – the bride’s father asserting his masculinity in the face of the increasingly boorish dance of the groom’s arrival?

Sunday Musing 13/01/14

I am waiting expectantly for the next AAP feat. And I don't mean another breathtaking electoral performance in the coming general elections. Much before that AAP needs to govern Delhi for the next three months if not brilliantly than at least credibly. if that happens I believe that the paradigm shift to take root in Indian politics. Talking about paradigm shifts, do you notice paradigm shifts in the people you love, admire or just know well? I have begun to notice quite a few. Probably because I accumulated a lot more data as I grow older - lot more people observed over a lot more years. In one individual case the paradigm shift in character has been both subtle and startling. I have admired him for more than two decades for being a 'big small man'. Diminutive in stature and modest in term of intellectual pitch, he was a true leader and friend - fearless, insightful and generous. And then success waylaid him. The paradigm shifted and from a "big small man' he transformed into a "small big man". The spirit of generousness that so defined him earlier is now polluted by a pompous preening that only highlights an incipient sense of insecurity. Have you noticed how insecurity is almost always a by product of success? You would think success would nurture security but quite to the contrary. The only state that predicates security seems to be the state of 'nothing to lose but our chains'. That's why perhaps the greatest and most difficult yoga to practice is the yoga of non-attachment. 'Looking for Sugarman' is an award-winning documentary on a songwriter singer named Rodrigues who lived in obscurity and genteel poverty in Detroit while his music, unknown to him, found almost anthem like success among two generations in South Africa. Later in life Rodrigues got to savor his success in South Africa with successive sold-out concert tours. "Looking for Sugarman" in a meditation on the nature of success and fame as it brilliantly captures Rodrigues poise as he contently sinks back into his life of obscurity in the US after tours of screaming celebrity in South Africa. The rise of the Australian team from the ashes of last year is a happy development for those of us who love Test Match Cricket as it promises the excitement of five more-or-less evenly matched teams - South Africa, India, Australia, England and Pakistan. Among my fellow followers of Test Match Cricket the above assertion will be a subject of much debate but I am ready with a vigorous defense! The Oscar season is upon us and there is a surfeit of potential Oscar winners on my hard drive. "Dallas Buyers Club" starts from the left-field with a destructive drug-abusing oversexed AIDS-infected protagonist who then in a pleasantly surprising turn half-way through the movie finds redemption and a measure of happiness springing from the depths of his gathering despair. Worth a watch. My iBooks shelf is overflowing as my reading took a backseat to an intense learning engagement with a field completely new to me. I have just begun to dip into 'Humboldt's Gift' by Saul Bellow. Waiting in the wings are Kate Atkinson's Life After a Life, Tenth of December by George Saunders and Americanah by Ngozi ( a Nigerian American). Let me conclude this Sunday musing with a word about the joys of continuous learning. I spent the last week engaged in learning the basics of a craft entirely new to me and way out of my professional field and I am glad to report that it is a most invigorating experience. Something to do with, I guess, getting long dormant neural connectionfiring again. Highly recommended. Signing off with a piece of poetry that can give some cold comfort on the days one despairs about the human condition (and may they be increasingly few). <i>Hollow Men We are the hollow men/ We are the stuffed men/ Leaning together/ Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!/ Our dried voices, when/ We whisper together/ Are quiet and meaningless/ As wind in dry grass/ Or rats' feet over broken glass/ In our dry cellar/ Shape without form, shade without colour,/ Paralysed force, gesture without motion;/ Those who have crossed/ With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom/ Remember us—if at all—not as lost/ Violent souls, but only/ As the hollow men/ The stuffed men./ - excerpted from 'The Hollow Men' by TS Eliot