Googling for love

In a desperate bid, I searched for “love” on Google today. Well, you could do the same and you would get the same results and I know exactly where you will stop. But a backgrounder is in order.
The past few months have been dark and I have wondered if the man who perhaps invented the word in any language ever realised that his invention has actually led countless idiots, me being one, to actually think the state is possible. I mean, if you see a tree and call it a “tree” I know a tree is possible and very much there. So I assume, along with the countless idiots, that the sadistic man who invented the word, knew of the blessed state. And yet we all spend our life in careful or careless approximations of that state, forever doomed to wonder, “was I in love?”, “Is this love?”, “Nah, this can’t be love”, “we like each other, but is it love?”
A few months ago, after floating blithely in one such love-crazed question bubble, I hit the lamppost in full impact. Anyway, the flashback stops here because it more or less blacks out after that. Until I surfaced after a manic depressive bout last night (or was it day) and searched for “love” on Google.
I told you I knew where you would stop because I stopped there. The Love Calculator. It’s the first site on “love” and all you have to do is feed in the names of two people to find out what chances the relationship would have. Well, I found out practically everything I didn’t want to. None of the babies, children, boys and men I have been after in different stages of my brief, eventless life, would have survived in a relationship with me. Only the last man apparently had a 63% chance of making it and that too if we could talk and sort out things. Ha ha, I know better than that now. Talk to a man!!!
But what do you know, the love guru who has set up this thing is very optimistic. So even in relationships where the chances were 0%, all it said was “well, love guru thinks there’s a chance this might happen but will require great effort”. Well, love guru, we didn’t fall in love to MAKE any EFFORT. There’s enough effort in paying off the rent and telephone bills.
But then, I am actually more optimistic than love guru. So after I had exhausted my chances with all the members of the opposite sex, some whom I’ve spoke about ten words with so far, I turned out to the two men I would really want a relationship with. But there’s no unmixed happiness there either. I could possibly have a good relationship with Sourav Ganguly. But of course, we will have to keep working at it and I am quite sure he has other things to do now so I will have to wait till at least he stops playing T20. And well, tragedy of tragedies, my chances with Kamal Hasan are like 14%. That, I think, is about the size of Dasavatharam’s viewership in the world.
After having spent a whole hour in such intellectual pursuit and none the wiser for love, I understood one thing though. Why no member of the opposite sex could hold a relationship with me for more than a month and a half max. Will check IQ on Google next.

Dasavatharam. And After

There’s I-me-myself and there’s I-me-myself-and-mind-you-mark-my-nine-other-selfs. Which is basically what Kamal Haasan’s managed to do with Dasavatharam. The story goes for a toss, the characters are all arbitrary, depending mostly on what Kamal wanted to dress up as and well, if you wanted logic, you wouldn’t be watching a Tamil movie anyway. In our miraculous world, an assassin’s bullet can remove a throat tumour “better than a surgeon” and after a tsunami, hero and heroine, nice and dry and alive, can rest their back and survey ground zero like they are watching television. But never mind that.
If I could trash Dasavatharam and resign my loyalty to Kamal, it would be easy. The problem is that there are snatches here that are brilliant by themselves. Some glimpses of what Kamal is turning out to be, some flashes of his past comedy and those little performances only he can rustle up in a blink.
For example, there’s the incorrigible Mr Balram Naidu, the RAW chief from Andhra in a safari suit and line-moustache, the obsequious bureaucrat but with a turn of phrase and home-grown intelligence. Or the “mental” grandmother who has a sense of humour and accent and a shrill voice that cracks up every now and then. Nobody but Kamal can give you a hint of everything in a couple of minutes; turn a mannerism into a dramatic monologue.
And, there’s the thinking Kamal fighting with the star Kamal in his movies lately. In Anbe Sivam, they got along damn well, in fact, the thinking Kamal so won over the star that the movie is memorable in simply what it says, not mentioning Kamal’s brilliant performance. In Virumaandi, they got along for quite a bit but then, the star completely junked the ending. In Dasavatharam, you almost want Kamal to simply give us three good interviews telling us what he thinks instead of stringing it along limply over three hours, where every hour or so, some character suddenly comes up with a gem in an otherwise uninspiring narration.
For instance, take Vincent Boovaragan, one of the 10 characters that the “universal hero” (that’s another recent Kamal fixation) plays in the movie. Vincent is a Dalit environmental activist. He is unlettered and is taking on the sand mafia. He is dark, dressed less than ordinarily, walks with an unassuming spring in his step and speaks a heavily accented Tamil. The dialogues are full of earthy wisdom, sometimes poetic, sometimes explicit. Vincent speaks of those who rape the earth, whose greed has gone far ahead of their wisdom, whose lust is so short-sighted it doesn’t see where they leave the next generation, indeed their own sons and daughters.
(Those few scenes took me back to that heart rending soliloquy in Virumaandi where a sloshed Kamal with his head half shaved rants, standing in what is to be his grandmother’s grave. There’s dialogue here so beautifully punctuated by Kamal’s gestures – he smears the red earth on his arms, legs -- but all to the effect that the soil was his grandmother’s blood, her lifeline. Selling an inch of it would amount to sacrilege. Sigh.)
But endearing Mr Vincent Boovaragan is lost here. Lost in completely unnecessary plots and sub-plots. Guess who he’s up against. There’s stocky Christian Fletcher (Kamal, will you please hit the gym before a film), the ex-CIA agent-turned-assassin who speaks darned good American English but is so sharp that the first thing he does when he gets his hands on a vial of biochemical toxin is bite it open like it’s a grenade. There’s Avtaar Singh, the pop singer who’s Punjabi only in name and dances like he’ll kick Jaya Prada (remind me, why was she there?) out of the stage. There’s Kalif Ullah who’s only contribution is being very tall and very slow at the same time. Then there’s the Japanese martial arts teacher who pulls off the superhuman task of keeping the pasty make-up on while executing some slick chops and kicks before shouting “tsunami” very thoughtfully when he sees a huge wave rolling. And of course, there’s George Bush who manages a pelvic thrush towards the end.
If you can live down this multiple person disorder, you will catch good old Kamal as the top scientist Govind, who runs around with a half-wit heroine throughout the movie and vintage Kamal, Rangarajan, who goes down the sea, literally, for his faith. There’s very deceptively promising stuff in the beginning with a muscular Kamal taking on the Chola emperor like only he can but then, the loonies take over.
Good old Kamal can barely take off and put on one appearance after the other, let along pick up the plot every now and then.
Yes, there is a plot. It starts with Chaos Theory (well, now we know what Kamal’s been reading lately) where an earthquake can begin in the flutter of a butterfly’s wings. So Kamal starts off with this Ramanuja disciple who takes on the might of the Chola kingdom to stand up for his Vaishnavite creed. And goes down with the idol of the lord that has been uprooted from the temple by the Shaivite king. Very well.
Cut to 2004 and George Bush has just got into the business of biochemical weapons. But our patriotic and humane scientist, moved by the gruesome death of his pet monkey which eats the toxin by accident, wants to save mankind and prevents unscrupulous bosses from selling the secret. But of course, toxic vial manages to reach India and then the hero must go from place to place lugging vial and heroine in search of the police, RAW, just about anybody. Which is how he meets all his other selfs, sometimes in the same frame, a technical feat, I was informed on Sun TV. Like all good heroes who collect their paychecks, this one manages to save the world, with help from a timely tsunami, romance his heroine and incidentally, give us a brilliant conclusion to this entire phantasmagoria – everything is linked, one flutter here is a catastrophe somewhere, one moment in history is a destiny that will return after generations to decide somebody’s fate. Now, why couldn’t he just have told us that in the beginning instead of pouring in crores into this epic-scale babble?
Kamal attempts a back and forth narrative so much in vogue these days – where you make nothing of what you see in the beginning till you see the end. There are spectacular helicopter shots, there’s action and gory killings, there’s even international locales and Mallika Sherawat but where are the basics? The much hyped make-up is amateur in places (I mistook Fletcher’s supposed scars for peeling off), the heroine actually repeats her insipid dialogue twice or thrice, there are no real-time tsunami shots so you can see cars and coconut fronds and bits of houses superimposed on waves (give us a break!) and occasionally, you have to altogether forget you brought your brain to the movie hall.
Picture this: Fletcher is fighting the martial arts teacher on the beach shore. Our scientist hero is watching from the sidelines because the Japanese guy has first fighting rights since Fletcher killed his sister. There’s an attempt at Matrix-style jumps and all that. And suddenly the American, Fletcher, basically Kamal staring from beneath a rubber face, tells martial arts teacher (also Kamal staring through slit-eyes beneath rubber face): “Remember Hiroshima?” Pat comes the reply from martial arts teacher who is usually English-challenged: “Remember Pearl Harbour?” What was that?!
There are more jumps and dishum-dishum and all that after which Fletcher gets the vial and decides to drink it up. Now but for these cross-cultural stunts, so far, everything has been peaceful on the shores of this peaceful south Indian coastal town. Not even a whiff of wind disturbing our martial arts guru as he cuts and slices the air while Fletcher is mutating on the spot. But we have been told that the biochemical toxin that Fletcher has begun to leak requires tonnes and tonnes of salt to neutralise. So before you can react, a giant wave rolls up and the martial arts teacher, who has lived in Japan all his life and is therefore used to such sudden weather phenomena, shouts helpfully, “Run, it’s a tsunami”, and leading by example, turns and runs. This, when the tsunami is happening about 10 metres from where he stands. Stupendous!
Please, Kamal, don’t do this to us. Enough of this I-can-do-this-and-that-too-and-all-at-the-same-time. Time you stopped saying the same thing over and over again. We’ve seen Japanil Kalyanaraman, Apoorva Sagotharargal, Aalavandaan, Avvai Shanmukhi... dozens of films with you doing this and that. And we’ve seen Nayagan, Thevar Magan, Virumaandi and Anbe Sivam and dozens of films that rode on characters that had a hint of everything, a hint of something truly human and universal. Films that spoke beyond the plot and dialogue of all its people put together and what people they were!
But I guess, every genius has quirks, and Kamal’s latest just managed to run into a couple of crores. Not to mention, in the process, running over Rajni’s Sivaji in terms of sheer hype and scale. But then, Kamal’s getting old and there’s nobody to carry on that school so there’s no time for too many quirks and senseless ones at that. The next time he thinks, I hope, he goes beyond Kamal Haasan and gives us a film we can remember and not eight out of 10 characters we can forget. Not to mention side props ranging from Asin to Mallika Sherawat to the venerable Napolean who gets all of a paragraph of dialogue.
In spite of all this angst, I will, perhaps, watch Dasavatharam again. Not because I’m a “mental” like the grandmother but because there’s still bits of Kamal here and there that I like to watch. Even if I have to sift the sands of Chidambaram to find those moments.
There’s only one thing to be said, Kamal, after this epic chaos, I’m waiting more than ever for your next film, like millions of your fans must be.
Oh, one other thing. Please cut out songs that “hail thy greatness, thou in whose depths universes sleep and thy endeavour so tireless that the UN will call you soon”. Oh puh-leeze. If you ever went to the UN, you would want to be secretary-general, his assistant, the translator, president of one warring country and one docile country, UN peacekeeper and his 80-year-old dying grandmother and ...

A militant and a Muslim

It's getting to a point where I think we're choosing to be lazy. The clubbing of just every act of terrorism by Muslim fundamentalists under "Islamic violence" is sickening. Over the past few days, I see everything — from the Glasgow attack to the 7/11 blasts — comfortably snuggling under a common headline, which, in every way, insinuates they must be read as related items. But of course, all of it is Islamic terror, it seems to say.For years now, since we started using the word in headlines and now comfortably in every line of copy, I've been wondering why we use the word "Islamic" if all we are trying to convey is that the perpetrators were Muslims. These are people who believe they are plying a religion-dictated crusade, and are we not reinforcing that idea and sending it out to the world everyday by calling it Islamic?We are forced to use Hindu (Hindu violence, Hindu fundamentalists), unfortunately, because that is the only word we have for the religion and those who follow it but at least, here there's a clear choice. I understand that the correlation between religion and violence is vital here but to call something "Islamic" signifies directly and immediately that there is an air of religious sanction. It is something that is part of the "Islamic" faith.I am not a believer but I cringe everytime somebody refers to something as the duty of a Hindu, or that it is part of Hindu scripture or the Hindu way of life. You might agree with it or not but when you enter a debate like that, you are automatically on the opposite side. I am definitely anti-Hindu if I begin to oppose somebody who tells me Lord Rama did not eat meat and it says so in such-and-such Hindu book. Which is why I think any Muslim would feel a queasy spot everytime we peddle out a terrorism story in the name of "Islamic militants", "Islamic" terror, "Islamic" world, "Islamic" beliefs...The other variation to this, as I recently read in The Guardian, is Islamist. Islamist seems more correct than "Islamic" but wouldn't Muslim be safest? And enough?Strangely, everytime we use "Muslim" in a copy, there is caution. Most of the time, we consider it safest to talk about a "minority community" rather than identify it, especially if it has to do with community clashes. The effort, I presume, is to make clear that the identity of the community itself had nothing to do with the clash. That they were Muslim or Christian, in itself, does not add to our understanding of how or why the clash happened. And also that it shouldn't bias our perception of the event per se.Wouldn't that argument apply all the more not to call terrorism "Islamic"? Refreshingly, prime minister Manmohan Singh warned against communitising such ideologies, thus weighing against the majority of moderates. By loosely terming as "Islamic", every act of violence carried out by a Muslim, we are black-marking everything else that is Islamic and a matter of faith for millions.An example. An intro in Guardian reads: Four Islamist militants who plotted to kill dozens of people on London's public transport network will each serve a minimum of 40 years.Change to: Four Muslim militants who plotted to kill dozens of people on London's public transport network will each serve a minimum of 40 years.I would still prefer to say just militants and later mention they were Muslim by faith but I guess that will not find takers at all.
Where words are not so much in question, it is our almost unwitting slanting of stories, our simplistic dissection of the issue. Day after day, I see stories that say so-and-so, though he plotted to kill, prayed five times a day. Oh and would you believe, the mullahs say so-and-so's father was a devout Muslim who gave away alms as a matter of principle. And his mother wears a veil though she's not known to subscribe to subversive ideology. Where is the dichotomy? Even if I can understand a Western gawky-eyed perception of such issues, why are we acting like reading namaaz, visiting a mosque or breaking the Ramzan fast is a matter of exotica? The Muslim in a lace cap is very photogenic but must we single it out as an attention-seeking element everytime there's a story that requires a visual element? (I am not even going into the thoroughly irresponsible or plain dumb captions).
PS: An almost similar angst is building over the overuse of the word Dalit. I understand empowerment, I understand mainstreaming, I understand vote politics. What I don't understand is how does it matter if a minor getting raped in a city is a Dalit or not? If she was say, raped by an upper caste zamindar, without recourse to justice, I understand. But you can't just improve the visibility of a crime by tagging Dalit because it suits popular imagination. Or can you?

Salt of the Earth

I started out this summer with the familiar god-it's-scorching trip until one afternoon. The house I share with a friend needed turning over so we wouldn't start a plague and the plants seemed resigned to their waterless fate. So it began, with the spoilt money plant, dripping the water carefully down the climber support in the middle. Seeping up and down the fibres until the plant seemed to shine in places. The plants drank hungrily, the dry earth exploded in little brown bubbles, sending a resentful mud-smell all over the place.
Then came the scrubbing and the floors seemed to give out a kind of marble-heat that I could almost feel creeping up. Where I leant, the skin seemed to stick to the wall, the back had to be peeled off. Where I bent, the sweat slithered in my knee joints, armpits, elbows, smoothing the edges of my movement. All this while my head swirled in the heat, caught in the monotonous action of hands and feet working across the floor.
Before I knew it, I was dripping in sweat. I could feel the shine of my back, the little rivulets running down my hips, the moist palm and instep, the glistening scalp and hair coming to knots and sticking to my nape. The sweat pouring down my face. The salt I could feel catching even my eyelashes.
I am a winter person but this was life teeming like my body was the primeval soup or something. It somehow reminded me of earthworms turning the moist, warm earth, their slippery dirty-red bodies moving like liquid caught in membranes. It reminded me of green leaves catching the sun on their faces, almost baking to a resolute dark green. It reminded me of the ivory-white roots of the drumstick tree that my grandmother dug up every now and then, giving off the smell of the earth and sun and decay.

Post-script: My day ended predictably, in office, in air-conditioning that brought gentle wafts of a hundred kinds of deodrant every now and then. Air-conditioning that sucked the moisture out and rendered a sanitised, cut-and-dried version. It was heaven, as a colleague put it. Antiseptic heaven, I suppose.

Very Nosey I am

Most thoughts of holiness desert me when I set foot near the Jama Masjid. Just when the flight to the sublime is encouraged by the pigeons casting fleeting shadows on the domes, a sword of a nose cuts me to pieces. Straight, a slope of about 25-30 degrees taking off from a forehead as huge and inviting as the masjid's courtyard. Not a pockmark, not a pinch, the nose is a monolith. The nostrils flare out, the veins in a filmy red glaring through membranously. I can almost hear them dilating when the Afghan-looking man makes eye-slits at me. What impertinence -- ogling at an elder like that.
Elder begone to the devil, the man had fiery red hair looking askance at the forehead and his face, a reflection of all the wild colours, was on fire. And while his eyes cringed, the kohl lines seemed to come together, ending in wrinkles that went to his ears on both sides. I usually swallow and make a quick even if disgraced exit at these times. But there's something about noses that makes me want to change the usual about Cleopatra's face that launched whatever number of ships. It must've been her nose, I'm sure. And although I haven't heard of a discipline to study noses, there's a wealth of information there. (Remember Salman Rushdie going on and on about Salim's cucumber-nose in Midnight's Children?)

Some humble submissions (I occasionally look at women as well, but mostly, it's men and their noses):
* Regal,sharp: Hopefully below a regal forehead (marked by a uniform stretch of flawless skin, temple to temple). These people are mostly proud, straight, sometimes temperamental but subject to a certain vanity of appearance, knowledge, something or the other.
* Hooked: The very sensuous devils. These are people of detail and seem to be constantly scrutinising something/someone. Sometimes malicious, given to gossip but very charming.
* Flat, capsicums: Very pleasant, easy-going. Since the noses can only make the faces cute or charming as opposed to striking, the mouth usually makes up, curling interesting as they speak or smile.
* Rounded: Snobbish, child-like. Sometimes the nose takes a life of its own, making the best of smiles ridiculous. Coupled with a pout, can be very difficult people.
* Huge noses, dilated nostrils: Now angry, now melting. Very excitable people who then announce their temper with breathing nostrils. Reminiscent of dragons!

(Field studies on, will keep adding to database)

Beginning to understand: Rape

Recently, I had a discussion with a friend and we differed, perhaps, for the first time, because he was a man and I wasn’t; I insisted he needed to be in my shoes to understand. His point was that reaction to rape needed to be unemotional; women need to consciously separate stigma from the whole idea to combat such offences. If we (women) looked at a rapist as we would look at a thief or even perhaps a plain murderer, we would put up a better fight, using our heads more than anything else.
I think it’s a little like saying men shouldn’t take bastardy or cuckoldry too seriously.
I then came upon an author who said she managed to write about one of her experiences of abuse in a novel. It wasn’t realistic, the fiction went beyond what had happened to her. And it wasn’t even rape. As a 17-year-old, she was “trapped” in the room of a boyfriend’s friend who was much older. As her boyfriend presumably slept in the adjacent room, this man insisted on giving her a massage. The fight lasted all night after which the man turned away and slept. Years later, she happened to come across him and questioned him bluntly. He made an excuse – “I was so messed up then” – and left immediately. The author smiled, relieved that she’d faced up to him even if years later.
Any man would react that all that the girl had to do was leave or take up her boyfriend on that. I agree. But at 17, I don’t remember being particularly bold. In most instances of physical teasing, I felt insulted most of all. As a child, a man (in his 30s) once tried to befriend me. I was attending music classes then, my father used to drop me off at the school in the morning and pick me up about an hour later. On that particular day, I happened to be early. I was new to the place and this man said I could ask him for any help I needed. Not even vaguely did I understand why a grown-up was being so considerate when I felt his hands moving up my thighs beneath my frock. I made an excuse and ran. Fortunately, I didn’t come up against him a second time; I am not sure what I would have done.
I must have been 10 or 11, I didn’t understand what was going on. Nobody in the family hugged or kissed much so physical touch in itself was a little weird. So I wondered if I was just uncomfortable although the man meant good. And if he didn’t, did he pick me because I appeared most meek? I wasn’t old enough, maybe, to feel insulted. I felt thoroughly ashamed. Like I had done wrong. I told nobody. I only told my father I did not want to go in early for music classes. I suppose I did manage the situation pretty well, I managed to fend off abuse. But it bothers me still. Not anger, only a strange sense of shame, and, fear.
There are other instances I remember, in school, on buses. Nothing traumatic but brief moments when I wondered what pleasure men got in abrupt groping or brushing or plain dirty talk. Or was it that I was being subjected to it, whatever IT was?
A few months ago, I was on a night bus. I was dozing off when I felt something creeping up my breast. Bugs I thought. Then realised that the passenger behind me had taken the trouble to lean all the way front from his semi-sleeper chair to have some fun. For a change, I felt anger before anything else. I asked him, loud enough, across the seat if he had a problem keeping his hands to himself. It didn’t work, he was at it again. I didn’t quite expect a busload of half asleep people to do anything about it. So I got my seat changed and sat behind the driver so I could catch some sleep in peace. Again, maybe I fended off a situation but something niggles still.
But maybe, a couple of years ago, I wouldn’t have said anything to him at all. Was it the education, was it a salary that made me independent, was it plain fending for myself in a metro that made me slightly confident? I don’t know. At least, I have the satisfaction of looking the bastard in the face.
I think rape is only a difference of degree. You sexually assault a woman to make a point, you rape her, it has the same impact, again, only different in degree. It isn’t the plain physicality of the violence. A gash across the arm isn’t the same as a stranger clutching at your hip or posterior. It is perhaps something that sounds dangerously close to honour (that very feudal concept) but it’s not. It is something more intrinsic, something that separates the sexes. If it wasn’t why isn’t there anything comparable that a woman can do to a man? Why don’t I just grab a man’s balls in public to humiliate him or show him I’m smarter?

Beginning of the Story

Am still struggling to remember
The quiet before the words
The silence of the womb
Before the cry for air