Chandrahas Choudhury on fiction

My apologies to those who might have read this post in the twelve hours after it was posted - there were some glaring, embarrassing typos.

I might have posted two fiction pieces this month but of all forms, I've found fiction the hardest to write. It’s the hardest, paradoxically, because it gives you more freedom than any other form. One doesn’t have to be precise about the details and can invent them howsoever one chooses so long as they are plausible - in contrast to the constraints that fact imposes on a non-fiction narrative. And yet, fiction takes enormous effort and control and there is no guarantee that the end effect is as desired – I’ve found it very exhausting, and have almost always preferred the safety of non-fiction.

In his recent review of Arvind Adiga’s The White Tiger, Chandrahas Choudhury provides some lessons on what can go wrong in fiction. If you read Chandrahas’ reviews, you’ll find something I don’t see much – or at least not as well expressed – in other reviews: a broad, general commentary in the beginning that connects beautifully with the specific criticism of the book he is writing about. Consider the first three paragraphs in his essay on The White Tiger. There are some sparkling observations here:

When compared to the journalist or the scholar, the fiction writer seems absurdly free. He or she can construct a story in any way he chooses. His characters have freedom to say whatever they like – in fact they are most persuasive when we feel them to be “free”, and not mouthpieces for the author’s ideas. All we demand in return is not that the story be true but that it be plausible - that it not give the appearance of being contrived.

But this requirement shows us that the fiction writer’s freedom is actually a difficult freedom. Constructing a plausible story from scratch – a story in which narration, dialogue, and plot construction work together to produce the effect of lived experience – can be harder than reporting or analysing a true story. This is the reason why, when judged by the highest standards, most novels are failures, some are honourable failures, and few are successes.

Fiction writers can misuse their freedom through simple incompetence, or by manipulative plotting, or by a failure to imaginatively realise the inner lives of their characters, or by simplified and schematic thinking that waters down the complexity of the world. Aravind Adiga’s novel The White Tiger seems especially instructive in this regard, because it seems to me to be culpable in all the ways mentioned above.

That’s about what can go wrong, but Chandrahas has an earlier essay with brilliant opening paragraphs where he talks of the strength of fiction:

Is fiction useful? Does the reading of novels or stories serve any constructive purpose other than diversion or, to use the specifically Indian word for the same experience, timepass? That it does not is the implicit argument of many readers who choose to apportion their reading time to history, biography, reportage, political analysis, books on management or (increasingly) inspirational literature—but not to fiction.

In a limited sense, this understanding is actually correct. Were the measure of a piece of writing to be its obvious utility, fiction would find it hard to defend itself in that court. After all, fiction does not offer any facts, hard empirical or statistical truths: It is by definition make-believe. It says nothing on the matter of improving relationships, establishing financial security, or controlling the breath for greater calm and energy. It seems ambiguous: it does not even deliver clear judgements on the characters it has itself presented. Fiction cannot even make up its own mind, let alone help us make up ours.

Yet, looked at from another viewpoint, the compass of fiction is precisely that which other disciplines and approaches leave out. What other schools of thought consider insignificant, or prove incapable of weighing, fiction treats with the greatest care and attention: a word, a gesture, a memory, a misunderstanding. As Milan Kundera observes, the knowledge we take away from fiction is existential knowledge. Reading the work of a skilled writer, we are at first taken by surprise, and yet we later close the book and say yes, life is like this.

The analysis is spot on. Do read Chandrahas’ blog, The Middle Stage. He’s an exceptional interpreter of books and literature, and you’ll find his blog is full of priceless essays that begin in a similarly sage way.

The Bollywood Omnibus

More fiction. Nearly five years ago, I wrote a story with a narrative blatantly assembled from the kitschy elements of Bollywood. My purpose, I guess, was to revel in the kitsch, enjoy the exaggerations and generate humor along the way. What you see below are the first few paragraphs of that story. I was never completely happy with it, and have kept it aside all this time, but isn’t a blog the best way to test things out, even if they are embarrassing?

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Police Inspector Arjun Sinha, a dashing, curly-haired, mustachioed man with a gently protruding paunch, was a prolific apprehender of underworld dons, criminals, mafia lords and smugglers. He was endowed with special shock-absorber legs that enabled him to land without losing balance on fast-moving trains from tall cliffs; with rocket-propellant thighs that enabled him to make long leaps and ascend ten-story buildings almost instantly; with a sharp vision that allowed him to trace bullet trajectories and thereby dodge staccato bursts of machine-gun fire from his enemies; with special sparring talents that enabled him to tackle ten thugs at the same time – so powerful and gifted was he, and so strong was his commitment to justice that he had, in just a few years as a police officer, been the nemesis of such deadly villains as the bald don Shakaal, the petty smuggler Loin, the evil scientist Dr.Dang, the cult leader Kooka Singh, and, most recently, the despotic and Hitleresque Mogambo.

But the one evil-doer whom Arjun still sought for, whose mere mention made his blood boil with rage and whose extermination for very personal reasons was his only goal, was the dacoit Ganja Singh, who had gained his name from his liking for marijuana and whose notoriety stemmed not only from his merciless raids on the villages in his area but also from his recently burgeoning, globe-wide drug-smuggling ring. Ganja Singh’s foray into the world of drug peddling had not changed his dacoit-like, nomadic ways that he had maintained for nearly thirty years: he still lived in barren, rocky valleys with his gun-toting, sycophantic thugs, and his characteristic rumbling guffaws could be heard for miles, especially during the drugged and delirious celebrations that ensued after successful village raids. His opening gambit to all enemies was: “If you’ve drunk your mother’s milk, come see me eye to eye!” or “My name is Ganja; and I was born at the banks of the river Ganga!” Ganja Singh was famous for his antics in the river: he would hold conferences in it, and suddenly, without warning, would immerse himself completely in water for well in excess of a minute, much to the concern of his loyal ruffians, and would then rise up in dramatic fashion with a loud “Yaaahhh!” as if rejuvenated by this experience. His followers, genuinely thrilled to see the feat, would then culminate the ritual with claps, cheers, lusty whistles and celebratory gunshots.

Ganja Singh’s drug-network thrived on account of his association with some powerful and important men. The most influential of them was Swamiji, the long-haired, bearded Delhi-based saint and Godman, who sported fifty gold and silver rings on his fingers and a thousand rosary beads of various sizes on his chest, and whose hypnotic and charming demeanor attracted many spiritually starved Hollywood beauties, business tycoons and impossibly rich sultans. He was especially invaluable to depraved politicians who sought astrological advice from him on when to campaign for the elections or start a new party or splinter an existing one. In his younger days Swamiji’s interest in numerology had mistakenly inspired him to study mathematics but unable to withstand its dreary formalism and objectivity he had abandoned the pursuit quickly. However, he never missed an opportunity to parade his peripheral knowledge of the subject: his metaphysical thoughts were almost always peppered with number tricks and mathematical constructs. Once, at his plush ashram in Delhi, during the course of a theological discussion with those around him, Swamiji had said:

“The universe is a vector, each infinitesimal moment defined by a realization of one of an infinite set of choices, this one choice chosen by the random rolling of a roulette, and this one choice makes all the others impossible, even if the others had had greater chance of occurring. Who rolls this roulette? If someone does, who rolls this someone who rolls the roulette?”

One of the fifty politicians who took shrine under Swamiji was Karun Yadav, popularly called Neta Bekasoor, as he always professed innocence although there were hundreds of cases against him: of rape, bribery, illegal transactions, and murder. He claimed that his detractors dreaded his incorruptible character, and had therefore employed their party cadres exclusively to plant evidence against him, invent crime after crime to keep him busy in the courts. Bothered by the incriminations, he sought spiritual bliss with the soothing Swamiji, who, after listening to his problems, had looked at the end of his long beard, at faraway stars, galaxies, revolving roulettes, planets, particularly at the aspect of Saturn, and had suggested that Karun Yadav, to gain popularity and prove his innocence to the masses, would somehow need to show his generosity to them before the next elections.

Karun Yadav had mulled over this suggestion and decided to use a fraction of his large cash reserves in his Zurich bank account for the construction of the Karun Yadav Janata Center in his birthplace, the idyllic, picturesque and vista-filled town of Pipalkot. The center was vociferously advertised throughout the nation, with the motto Muft Me Milega (You’ll Get it For Free): it promised a fresh, free loaf of naan to all those who visited it every day; on special festive occasions of the year – such as New Year’s eve and Diwali – and Karun Yadav’s birthday, it promised a paisley-patterned sari with a matching blouse for women, and pajamas and kurtas –100% cotton – for men. The most enduring image of the campaign was the thirty-feet wide and twenty-feet long billboard of the smiling Karun Yadav donning thick black goggles – that he wore perennially, even at night – and dressed in his special starched-white, long-sleeved kurta that almost covered his fingers; whisker-like, graying hair sprang from the edges of his ears, symmetrically, on either side of his woolly astrakhan cap. Next to this endearing portrait was the message: “Come, you’ll get it for free from the only truly innocent politician you’ll see!”

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And so the story goes on and on for ten thousand inexorable words. Here's another passage - the last one I'll share in this post, so you don't get too bored - that appears towards the end, just before the climax. It features Ali, Arjun Sinha's twin brother. Ali was separated from Arjun at birth, and while Arjun became a policeman, Ali went to Dubai and became a local gangster and petty thief. Ali, however, has now returned to India to meet Ganja Singh:

Incidentally, it was on the same day that Arjun’s twin brother and Ganja Singh’s new recruit Ali arrived in Pipalkot; he was dressed stylishly in a leather jacket studded with tiny blue and yellow light bulbs that he now and then flicked on and off using a switch in his pocket. He waited, arms akimbo, at the outskirts of the town, next to a dirt trail that disappeared into the jungle, for one of Ganja Singh’s men to take him to the dacoit’s camp. In a short while, he meticulously chose a Marlboro cigarette from its pack, nonchalantly flipped it several meters into the air, expertly intercepted it at the corner of his mouth, lighted it, drew deeply, and looked up at the sky. He was exhilarated after having flirted with two women on his flight from Dubai to Delhi: one, a beautiful Indian air hostess, dressed skillfully in a bright blue sari that allowed him long glances at her beautiful waist; and the other, an Indian passenger, seated next to him, equally beautiful, but dressed instead in a bright red sari, licking the richly colored tops of a maroon lollipop. Later in the flight, after one of his meals, he ordered strawberry and mango for dessert, and imagined the two beauties biting into the luscious fruits with slow sensuousness; he saw himself as a sheik reclining on a plush cushion, surrounded on either side by the two women in see-through veils, in a well-lit tent full of tapestry curtains and the silhouetted humps of resting camels. He also dreamt of a golden bowl overflowing with fruits and of placing purple grapes in the navels of the two moaning beauties and using their bellies as springboards to pop them into his mouth.

Just as his thoughts had been interrupted then by the crackle of the pilot’s voice, announcing their descent into Delhi, so was his pleasant recollection of the flight interrupted now by crows that had chosen the tree next to him to work up a ruckus. He glanced at his expensive Swiss watch that he had pilfered expertly from one of Dubai’s shopping malls, frowned and shook his head in disapproval at the absence of the promised escort to Ganja Singh’s hideout. He resolved to find the place himself, headed along the dirt trail and disappeared into the canopy of trees, fiddling with his switch restlessly, the colored blinking bulbs on his jacket making him look like a strangely illuminated apparition entering the jungle.

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Ramesh's turnaround

Fiction, after a long time. Hope you enjoy this. All comments welcome.

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Ramesh worked and lived in a small Midwestern town. Life was generally dull, but not when it came to buying groceries. For spices, Ramesh went to the only Indian store in town, but for vegetables, fruits, nuts, cereals and lentils – yes even lentils, that indispensable Indian staple – he went to an “alternative” store called Good Organics. Ramesh felt pleased and excited about his choice. He made sure all his co-workers and friends knew he shopped there. At parties he brought expensive potato chips and made it a point to mention, much to everyone’s surprise and sometimes irritation, that they were organic and kettle cooked.

Ramesh’s enthusiasm for all things organic came from his uncle who owned a farm near Coimbatore in south India, and who had shifted from conventional to organic farming a few years ago. With an ardor that is to be found among converts, his uncle now campaigned fiercely for organic farming; he traveled to talk and evangelize in seminars and workshops in India. Ramesh had been impressed and had resolved to do his bit, halfway across the world, in the wind-swept American prairie town he lived in.

That was all very well, but Ramesh hadn’t accounted for the quirks in his own personality. Though good-natured, he was notoriously short tempered; he flew into a rage for the most trivial reasons, and stuck stubbornly to his own point of view. But even his closest friends – who well knew Ramesh’s eccentricities – could not have predicted his temper would turn against his beloved grocery store.

How did it begin? Probably with the organic and supposedly locally produced tomatoes that Ramesh, a few months after shopping at Good Organics, found to be almost tasteless. Maybe the mold-infested packets of organic blueberries, expensively priced, ticked him off too. As did the heavy emphasis on “fair trade” dark chocolate, which Ramesh, a lover of sweet milk chocolate, abhorred, but which all employees in the store waxed eloquently about. So the euphoria and prestige of buying organic and healthy was slowly beginning to wear, but there was one incident that pushed him decisively over the edge.

That incident, of all things, had to do with a small clarification that Ramesh sought regarding cooking oil.
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Ramesh had recently begun using organic olive oil for his cooking – extra virgin olive oil, actually. He had been using canola before, but olive oil was extolled by just about everyone. Ramesh, who primarily cooked curries, had never used it for his high heat cooking and stir-frying before. Olive oil, he had felt, was only for salads and pasta. But on the Food Network channel, he once saw a ham and cheese sandwich being fried in a vat bubbling with extra virgin olive oil at a restaurant in Venice. Ramesh was indignant: If Italians could deep fry in extra virgin olive oil, then why couldn’t he stir-fry his vegetables, lentils and spices with the same?

He began using organic extra virgin olive oil profusely, anxious to compensate for the health benefits he had missed. A bottle would disappear within a week into his dals and sabzis. And as with everything else, he loudly announced this alteration in his cooking habits to his colleagues at work. He mentioned it so much that his friends had to remind politely that they already knew about it.

One day, while at Good Organics, Ramesh realized that all the bottles of organic olive oil were extra virgin. He asked Melanie, one of the store employees, “Just wondering – do you carry olive oil that is not extra virgin? You see - I do high heat cooking with the extra virgin variety, and was wondering if just olive oil may have better properties.”

It was an innocuous question; Ramesh was only idly curious and wasn't expecting to get an answer. It led instead to an unraveling he could never have anticipated.
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Melanie was a short, young woman with an expressive face. She left her blond hair stylishly tousled and bunched at the top and used a long pin to keep it together. She always beamed at him when he entered the store, and was effusive in her mannerisms.

“Wow, you’re from India!” She had exclaimed when she met him the first time. “Do you cook vegetarian? You should share some recipes with our vegan deli – maybe we’ll introduce a curry sandwich into the menu!”

Ramesh had found her booming voice and pronounced friendliness endearing in the beginning, but lately they had begun to grate.
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“Olive oil for high heat cooking!” She now cried in response to his query, her face showing alarm. “You use that for high heat cooking? Oh, no, no, no, you shouldn’t do that…Olive oil should not be heated at all!”

“Really? I mean, a little bit of heat…”

“No, oh no, you shouldn’t!”

“But you know, I saw a sandwich being fried in extra virgin olive oil in Venice…”

“Yes, chefs do it all the time, but they shouldn’t be really. Researchers have recently found that that isn’t good – it’s actually toxic for you!”

“Toxic!” Ramesh said, taken aback, getting genuinely concerned. “Toxic, really? But I’ve never deep fried, I just stir fry …I heard…”

“No, no you shouldn’t be heating it at all…Coconut oil is better for high heating.”

“Coconut oil?” said Ramesh, now confused. He had thought coconut oil was used only for hair - and how he hated it! He’d been forced as a kid to use it liberally to set his unruly hair before leaving for school, and over the course of the day it seemed to diffuse slowly onto his face, giving him a greasy look.

“Yes, coconut oil, research has shown is good for high heat and frying!”

Ramesh stood there uncertainly.

“I know it’s a bummer!” Melanie said, sighing. “But that’s what research says!” She pursed her lips and shrugged.

Ramesh walked around the aisles in a daze. He lingered in front of the bottles of organic extra virgin olive oil, recalling the amazing rapidity and gusto with which he had consumed them in past months. He felt slightly dizzy, half expecting to fall ill that very moment from toxicity. He clicked his tongue, admonishing himself and finally picked up a bottle of organic canola oil. There was no way he would have used bought coconut oil, even if it had been available.

He returned home, a frown on his face, determined to get to the bottom of the matter. He searched the Internet about the ill effects of heating olive oil. And he found that virtually all the websites stated that olive oil could be heated, no problems – it might lose its flavor but its nutrition, not much. As he dug deeper and deeper, it became even clearer that there was nothing wrong with heating at all. It certainly wasn’t toxic, as Melanie had so convincingly claimed.

For nearly ten minutes he paced around his place, Melanie’s statements playing repeatedly in his mind; the more he thought about about what she had said, the more incensed he became. Her voice and her demeanor annoyed him to no end. When he returned to the store, Ramesh was bursting with anger. The bells at the door tinkled urgently as he stormed in. One of the cashiers, a man with a Mohawk hairstyle, looked at him in surprise.

“Where’s Melanie?” Ramesh asked him.

“Melanie? Um… well, I think she’s in the bulk room. But why?”

Ramesh didn’t respond, and headed there, his face flaming with rage. He saw Melanie checking on the open containers of flours and cereals in the bulk room.

“Back for another round?” she asked laughing when she saw him, but quickly realized something was wrong. “Are you okay?”

“Who told you heating olive oil was toxic?” He was breathless with aggression now, and wasn’t very coherent.

“Hey now…cool down,” Melanie said. “I read it somewhere. Some researchers…”

“Which researchers? Name them now!”

“I don’t know… I read it in some magazine…”

“Which magazine? Name it now!”

“I don’t have to name anything to you, okay?” she retorted, her eyes flashing and voice rising. “I am not here to answer your questions…”

“Well, then are you here to give false information, huh?” Ramesh asked almost hysterically. “To scare people to death?”

He took out his wallet; his trembling fingers searched for his membership card, which gave him a ten percent discount. He finally squeezed it out with difficulty, muttering incoherently all the time. With an exaggerated gesture, he threw it to the ground, and ground it with his foot.

“You see that’s what it deserves! With liars like you…” He picked the card up again, and again threw it violently to the ground.

Ramesh was so engrossed in this that he hardly noticed anything else. He had lost his temper, but he hadn’t expected Melanie to lose hers. But she too was just as prone to unleashing her temper in unexpected ways. In one swift motion she hurled a fistful of wheat flour at him from the container behind her. And then another, and another! With her other hand, she grabbed raisins – a large jar of raisins was close at hand – and barraged them at him.

In just a few seconds, Ramesh, who’d had to time to gauge what had hit him, was covered in white. The raisins were of the sticky kind and some had stuck to his flour-laden cheeks. They slowly fell off but a couple remained.

“Get out!” She screamed

Ramesh came to his senses. He was startled but still angry. If he had waited a few seconds, Melanie might have sloshed him with honey next – in fact, she was reaching for a jar. But he stomped his foot, kicked the card – now half hidden in a small mound of flour pocked with raisins – one final time and left. The cashier with the Mohawk hairstyle stared at him, seriously for a while, and then burst out laughing.

“Holy freaking Christ - it’s like Halloween here!”

But Ramesh didn’t hear him; he had already left.

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And that was the end of that. Ramesh never set foot in Good Organics again, but store employees often found him on weekends picketing outside, with a placard that said: “Moldy blueberries and scabbed potatoes – Good Organics sells and deserves only rotten tomatoes!” He cut a lonely figure, but claimed to customers he was following the Gandhian form of “non-violent, grassroots protest”. A couple of times he exchanged frosty glances with Melanie and store employees. Melanie had actually apologized to him once and even asked him out to coffee, but he would have none of it.

When winter set in and snowstorms put an end to his protest, Ramesh resorted to a different strategy. He shot off formal letters to various supermarket chains, including Walmart, encouraging them to “takeover Good Organics”, and thus help in ending “the tyranny of local stores”. He claimed that these stores were perceived in the community to be “exemplars of local democracy, but were shams really, purveyors of all sorts of falsehoods.”

And yes, to make his point, he had begun to shop at a supermarket chain, where he now bought all his groceries, including his olive oil.

Zimbabwe update - the China connection - and other thoughts

Things have gone downhill in Zimbabwe since I wrote about Mugabe. The situation has been made infinitely more dangerous by a Chinese ship An Yue Zhang, which is carrying arms (“77 tonnes of small arms, including more than 3m rounds of ammunition, AK47 assault rifles, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades”) to be delivered to Mugabe. No prizes for guessing what they are for: Mugabe has most likely lost the recent election, but refuses to step down; he needs weapons to repress any opposition. The arms deal is a serious development; if the weapons reach Mugabe, Zimbabwe could face crippling violence. Thankfully, An Yue Zhang wasn't allowed to unload in Durban as it was initially supposed to, and now it is floating on the seas, unsure of its course, and possibly headed for Luanda, Angola.

Let's hope the ship is sent back.

Here’s a good piece at The Acorn, which provides some perspective and updates. Ethan Zuckerman is following the situation closely too. And here’s the Zimbabwean blog, Sokanwele - which incidentally means 'enough is enough'.

Update: The ship has been called back.

An earlier post on what I think is a key and still unfolding issue: China in Africa.
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The Chinese government has come under intense scrutiny this year. Tibet, Sudan, and now Zimbabwe.

Rochester, Minnesota, where I live, is generally an apolitical place, but last week the Dalai Lama's presence changed that (incidentally, the Pope was in the United States too, and so was Archbishop Desmond Tutu). The Dalai Lama was in Rochester probably for treatment at the Mayo Clinic , but he also gave a talk. Many Chinese had turned out with placards to protest, and present their side of the story – of how the media distorts what is going on in Tibet, how the Dalai Lama is behind the violence in Tibet and so on. Tibetan protestors were there too – shouting “Shame, Shame, China Shame!” and “China lie, people die!” – and conversations got quite animated as they waited for the Dalai Lama to leave the Marriott hotel.

Both groups stood across each other on the pavement. The Tibetans relentlessly shouted their slogans - they were clearly the more vocal of the two groups. The Chinese retorted now and then. A young Chinese young girl, not more than twenty years old, began talking back, but shortly she was so overwhelmed by her emotions that she began crying quietly. It was a sobering sight.

Amigos de Obama

Want to listen to a melodious Latino endorsement for Obama unlikely though that may seem? Check this video which came out before the Texas primary -

Or, if you aren't satisfied, here's a Bollywood endorsement (this has been around for a while too):

Via Ethan Zuckerman.

Blogging will be light

Am busy the next few weeks, so might not be able to post much. Not that posts have been prompt anyway – generally I put up stuff only 4-5 times a month – but since there does exist a small group of readers out there, it’s only fair that I let them know. Hopefully, I’ll be able to find some new material. In the meantime, please do bear!

A fictional interview with Adam Smith

Atanu Dey has a fictional interview on his blog with the spirit of the long deceased Adam Smith. Expectedly, given Atanu's leanings, the overwhelming theme is economic freedom; and the interesting parts are the spirit's thoughts on India's situation. One of Smith’s answers is a direct quote from The Wealth of Nations, and posits the famous invisible hand theory. I like this passage as it provides an understanding that isn't necessarily intuitive but makes sense when one thinks carefully about it.

“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. … [Every individual] intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.”

Will Mugabe stay on?

In the 1970s while fighting for freedom against the entrenched and seemingly unshakable white rule of Ian Smith, Robert Mugabe was radical and uncompromising in his approach, espousing Marxism and revolution in Zimbabwe. But when he overwhelmingly won the elections twenty-eight years ago – Zimbabwe’s majority black population was finally allowed to vote for the first time – he stuck a conciliatory note, calming the fears of the country's white minority. This is what he said on April 18, 1980, Zimbabwe’s independence day:

“The wrongs of the past must now stand forgiven and forgotten. If we ever look to the past, let us do so for the lesson the past has taught us, namely that oppression and racism are inequalities that must never find scope in our political and social system. It could never be a correct justification that because the whites oppressed us yesterday when they had power the blacks must oppress them today because they have power. An evil remains an evil whether practiced by white against black or black against white.”

Stirring, sage words. But more than anything else they illustrate how a politician can speak such eloquent phrases and go back on them. Mugabe persecuted whites during his twenty-eight year tenure, routinely persecutes his political opponents, and has today left the country’s economy in shambles. The current inflation rate is staggering. Lunch for 8 people costs six million Zimbabwe dollars (see picture), about 18 US dollars.

And Zimbabwe is very much in the news these days after recent elections. Mugabe seems to have lost to the opposition candidate Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). But unsurprisingly Mugabe refuses to concede, although there has been speculation he might give in this time. What next? Tyrants usually don’t leave easily; one just hopes Mugabe's exit, whenever it happens, does not lead to instability and violence.

Frontline - Bush's War

It’s been five years since the Iraq war, and a lot has been written about the subject. But if you want a comprehensive one-stop overview, beginning from when Iraq first appeared on the Bush agenda - believe it or not, the neoconservatives in Bush's circle brought it up in the days after 9/11 despite there being no reason to do so – to the back room dealings among the President’s closest advisers; from the facts that were manufactured to fit war policy, to the embarrassing lack of planning in Iraq after the invasion; for all this and lots more look no further than this superb, 4-hour documentary by Frontline called Bush’s War, recently aired on American Public Television. You’ll get to see interviews from many of the major players; you’ll learn of the intense tug of war between the two sparring camps: Colin Powell and the State Department people on one side; Cheney, Rumsfeld Wolfowitz, the neoconservatives, on the other. You’ll also get to know how flimsy the Iraq war planning effort was, how it was bungled badly.

Yes, the story is known, has been told before, but not on such an epic scale and not in such an accessible form. The entire show is available free online. Go watch and find out how those with power pull strings and deftly conduct their politics – it’s a fascinating look at the decision-makers of the Bush government.

Musings on the coming of Spring

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It snowed last Saturday, and it was beautiful when I walked out in the morning. The temperature was just below freezing, too warm for the snow to stick. Because there was no wind, I could trace each flake, swirling and eddying gently and unhurriedly before disappearing upon contact with the road. The flakes were everywhere, seemingly suspended mid-air, and though I have seen plenty of snow this winter, it was a special, surreal moment.

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I drove to St.Paul later that day. It was only a week into spring, and the countryside was still covered with snow. My eyes blinked inadvertently during the drive, unable to take its oppressive whiteness. Beneath this all-pervasive white cloak are farms that will be plowed after the snow melts. And when they are, these plow marks, these lightly curving furrows on dark earth will, in concert with the gentle swells and ebbs of the prairie terrain, create the sublime impression that the entire landscape is somehow in motion.
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The last couple of weeks, I have woken in the mornings to the sound of dripping water, the most pleasing sound after a winter so severe even hardy Minnesotans have had enough. Just beyond my bedroom window is a little awning. In one of its corners – the only one visible to me from my lazy, reclined position – water from melts accumulates slowly, bulges into a drop, then falls under its own weight: drip, drip, drip, with pleasing regularity!

And for the first time in months I am seeing grass – brownish green with a leaden, exhausted look to it – grass that has been hibernating beneath the snow since November last year.

Harjit Sodhi's story

On Space Bar’s invitation (thanks very much to her) I wrote this piece for Blog Bharti 's Spotlight Series. It’s a story I heard on Minnesota Public Radio. I am not quite satisfied with the piece since its structure can be improved, and its content suffers because my knowledge is limited by what I heard on radio. Nevertheless:

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I was a student at Arizona State University in the Phoenix metro area when 9/11 happened. The days after were quite tense. On Saturday, the 15th, there were rumors among Indian students that a gang in a car was firing at people who looked Middle-Eastern, and that they were on their way to Tempe, the suburb the university was in.

The rumor wasn’t true but it wasn’t entirely false either. That afternoon, Balbir Singh Sodhi, an Indian immigrant who owned a gas station store had been shot dead. Balbir was the first victim of a dozen or so hate crimes involving South Asians and Middle-Easterners that happened in the aftermath of 9/11 all over the country. Balbir was Sikh and his turban had given the shooter the impression he was Muslim. The shooter, Frank Roque - who had apparently declared at a local restaurant that he was going to target some “towel-heads” - was arrested and is now serving a life sentence.

Balbir’s death was a terrible tragedy, but, as I learned recently, it wasn’t the complete story. The complete story had to do the Sodhi family’s immigration to the United States. In a strange kind of twist, that immigration had been spurred in the first place by the sectarian conflict in India involving Sikhs, just less than two decades before 9/11.

Harjit Singh Sodhi, Balbir’s brother and the first member of the family to have left India, talked of his experiences recently on Dick Gordon’s radio show The Story, on National Public Radio. I’ve pieced together most of this story from that interview (look in the archives for the show on Thursday, March 6th, 2008).
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As clashes between Sikhs and the Indian government escalated in the early 1980s, Harjit, who had seen death from the conflict first hand, felt he and his family would never be safe in India, and decided to leave for the United States. Why the United States? Because he had read in schoolbooks that it was a wonderful place, a “heaven” of sorts. He left alone without his wife and children. But since he only had a forged passport, no contacts and little money, the process wasn’t easy: he was knocked back and forth across the world; in his quest to reach the US, he had to travel to Mexico, Cuba, Thailand, Jordan, Moscow, and back to Mexico. Finally, Harjit walked from Mexico, crossed the US border and illegally entered the United States. He first went to Los Angeles, and then did odd jobs - pruning grape vines in Fresno, working at a 7-11 store - before moving to Phoenix and starting an Indian restaurant.

The Reagan administration granted amnesty to illegal immigrants who had worked in agriculture, and Harjit, who had done that, got his green card. He was able to bring his wife and children. He was successful; he was living the American Dream. Harjit found that the United States was indeed the heaven he had envisioned it to be: safe and friendly, a place he could begin a new life. He embraced his adopted country whole-heartedly and was proud of it.

Harjit also succeeded in encouraging his other brothers to move to the United States, with the promise that they too would have the same life, comforts and safety that he had. Balbir was one of these brothers, and in April 2001, they decided to open a gas station store together in Phoenix.

It was outside this store, five months later, while discussing plans with landscape architects, that Balbir was shot.

But that was not all. In August next year, while driving from Delhi to his village in India, Harjit got an urgent message, one he could scarcely believe, that another of his brothers, Sukhpal, a cab driver, had been shot in his cab in San Francisco. Although, it has not been established, this too might have been a hate crime. Nearly three thousand people were waiting in his village, having got the news earlier, with questions about why Sikhs - and especially the Sodhi brothers - were getting targeted in America.

Overcome with grief, Harjit broke down and momentarily contemplated returning to India. But his wife insisted that they stay in the US since they could expect justice there. Balbir’s killer, she pointed out, had been apprehended and sentenced, something she felt they could not expect back in India. Besides there were practical matters: the restaurant could not just be left behind; they had stayed in the US for over twenty years. In India they would have to start from scratch.

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Almost six years hence, Harjit continues to live in the United States; two of his other brothers have stayed on as well. On occasions, he gets taunted because of his turban - he is called Bin Laden - yet brushes such insults aside. His children, born in the US, wear the turban too. Instead of assimilating, he appears to have retained Sikh and Indian aspects, and sees no contradiction in being staunchly American. Just how much he believes in the United States is clear in his response to a question by a Japanese reporter during a press conference that followed Balbir’s shooting in Phoenix. The reporter had asked:

“Mr. Sodhi, your brother was killed by an American. What do you think of the American?”

The question was pointless. But Harjit was deeply offended for a different reason. He responded emotionally:

“What are you asking me? You should be apologizing. You think I am not American, my children are not Americans? Americans have a different color or culture?”

Something in the way Harjit talked about this in the interview (and from his other comments as well) suggested he still feels strongly about the issue. But I wonder: How, in his most private, contemplative moments, does he reconcile his belief in the United States with the two tragedies that must have shaken it to the core? A distrust of India brought him to the US, but there are good reasons for him not to trust the United States as well. Yet he does not seem to feel any rancor for his adopted country - at least he betrays none in the interview. Perhaps it has something to do with the magnitude of effort it took him to reach a position of relative security: the long journey alone with the forged passport; entering illegally and taking up odd jobs; the slow climb to prosperity. Perhaps he does not want to disclaim all that he has painstakingly earned and the country that allowed him to do so.

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Harjit’s respect for an immigrant’s willingness to persevere despite adversities is reflected in his position about others like him, of whom there are plenty. He feels a strong empathy for the tens of thousands of Hispanic immigrants, who - as he had done more than two decades ago - trek daily from Mexico, risking death by dehydration and harassment by armed gangs, across the arid landscape south of the United States, and eventually to the cities and towns of California and the southwestern states (and even beyond) where they find low-paying jobs in farms, construction sites, car washes, restaurants.

Harjit’s restaurant, like all other Indian restaurants, hired illegal immigrants. But now, as a business owner and a legal resident of the United States, he is being pressured by lawmakers to crackdown on them. He himself benefited from the porous borders and lax laws that allowed him to settle in the country. Not unsurprisingly, he disagrees with recently passed new laws that are tough on undocumented workers:

“You think this is a just law? I’ve heard 12 million people live illegally in the United States. They want to send all these people back? Even those who live peacefully and work hard, try to feed their families and lead a better life? I too was an illegal once.”

Immigration, of course, isn’t a simple issue: it isn’t about freely allowing entry, neither is it about erecting supposedly impenetrable fences (an actual fence is currently being constructed along the US border). Just about every region in the world faces this problem; even within countries, the movement of people poses problems and creates tensions. The answers aren’t simple, but stories like Harjit’s - what events his adult life has straddled and what searching questions he’s been asked! - give us much needed glimpses into the travails and successes that accompany such journeys.

Excerpts from The Second World

Parag Khanna’s The Second World is a fascinating book. As a forerunner to its release, Khanna wrote about its principal thesis in a lengthy New York Times article (my post about it here). He posited that the world consisted now of three major powers: a weakening United States, a growing European Union, and China. Further, and more crucially, he argued that it is in second world countries – such as Kazakhstan, Libya, Vietnam, Brazil to name just a few – that we will witness shifts in global power. Khanna has actually traveled to more than three dozen such countries in the span of two years; the book is based mostly on his travels.
At times the tone of the book is too formal. Sample this for instance: “During travel, thought and perception merge; contradiction can emerge as a truth to be revealed, not some exception to be disproved. Such ambiguity is the corollary of complexity after all. Reality is famously resistant to theories that measure the world according to what it should be rather than how it really is.” Also momentum-breaking is Khanna’s use of such clunky words and terms as “autarky”, “kleptocratic economy”, “petrocracy” – words common perhaps in a policy document, which is what The Second World is.

But quibbles aside, The Second World analyzes complexities unfolding in far-flung places. I can't think of another book that covers so many countries, summarizes their prospects and roles in the international geopolitics, gives pithy descriptions of their cities, and quotes diplomats, academics, taxi-drivers and street side vendors. (Though each person gets exactly one or two lines. We never get flesh and blood portraits of these nameless people – The Second World isn't that sort of effort. )

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Now to some excerpts that are the main purpose of this post.

Khanna provides subtle analysis of the dynamics in Central Asian countries -- formerly on the famed Silk Route -- and the Russian Far East which, though they might seem to have fallen off the map, are crucial because of their resources. He feels that a new version of the Great Game – one that imperial powers, Tsarist Russia and Victorian Britain, were engaged in the 19th century – is now being played. And China seems most active everywhere; not only its government but its people too. Consider this:

“Meanwhile, north of Beijing, the Great Wall is crumbling and roughly six hundred thousand illegal Chinese immigrants a year are pouring northward into Russia’s depopulated Far East – a number almost identical to Russia’s annual population decline.

[…]

The Far East has become a Russian dream-nightmare: China is developing the region in ways Russia has not, and it is gradually occupying it as a result. What looks like Russia on a map looks a lot more like China on people’s faces. Chinese citizens (and Koreans deported by Stalin) visit Chinese-operated health clinics, and Chinese men even marry Siberian women, whose husbands are either perpetually drunk or already dead as a consequence. ”

Tibet and Xinjiang – China’s largest provinces with separatist aspirations and without which it not only shrinks dramatically in size but also loses its gateway to Central Asia – also get a separate chapter. Here's what Khanna has to say about Tibet, which has been in the news recently:

“Large empires are maintained through a combination of force and law, and China has not wavered in its strategy across Tibet and Xinjiang; it merely a difference of degree. In even the remotest corners of Tibet, small army bases house platoons of the [Chinese] People’s Liberation Army (PLA), with soldiers menacingly practicing martial arts twice daily in public squares, often right next to ancient and fragile Buddhist stupas. Even inaccessible jungle areas designated environmentally protected zones are often actually military encampments. Signs trumpeting “Tibet Power” refer strictly to Chinese electricity company.”

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Let’s go now to a different part of the world: South America. I mentioned earlier that Khanna gives pithy descriptions of cities – in fact these descriptions are to me the best parts. Here are a couple of examples. First Caracas, Venezuela:

“At least six different militias loyal to Chavez menacingly roam the streets of Carcass on foot, on motorcycles, and in jeeps, wearing camouflage and body armor. With machine guns casually dangling from their shoulders, they are jovial with red-shirted Chavistas but intimidating to all others. Rampant crime keeps opposition off the streets, and while they’re struck home, citizens watch Chavez’s marathon monologues on the television stations he has seized.”

And to finish, Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro:

“In a country that is three quarters urban, Sao Paulo has grown into something beyond a mega-city sprawl: it is well nigh infinite city, with a population that can neither be contained nor measured. Its countless steel-gated complexes are, in effect, high-rise favelas for those who can afford housing. Sao Paulo’s Rua Oscar Freire has been rated one of the world’s top luxury shopping streets, and wealthy Paulistanos boast the highest rate of private helicopter usage in the world – but at chic restaurants, women make sure to have their purses bound with wire to their chairs. By contrast, marvelous and desperate Rio- stretching so many miles on the coast that a marathon there would require no loops – is a beachfront metropolis noted as much for its favela shantytowns as its trend-setting restaurants. But like Istanbul, there is an underlying rhythm, even coziness, to the inevitable chaos of a city so large it is sometimes difficult to tell whether Rio is claiming nature or nature is claiming Rio as they expand and encroach on each other.”

More to come as I get into the second half of the book.

On Nollywood

Click on the links below to see the videos on which this post is based: and Link 2. The picture to the left is of the famous Nigerian actress, Stephanie Okereke.

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I wrote here that the most vibrant movie industry after Hollywood and Bollywood is Nollywood, from Nigeria. Nigerian movies are not released in theaters but made directly available on DVDs, CDs and videos. As the most populous country in Africa (130 million), Nigeria provides a ripe market for Nollywood (it also has markets elsewhere in Africa and the diaspora). The industry is based in bustling Lagos, where there's a powerful actor’s guild with 5000 registered actors.

Nollywood’s settings are decidedly rudimentary, the special effects tacky and amateur, but that’s because the directors work on shoestring budgets and extremely short timelines (2-3 weeks for instance). They work despite choking traffic and noise on Lagos streets; bystanders are often brought in to do roles in impromptu fashion; and in one case a movie was shot in an actual hospital, with patients and hospital staff featuring in roles even as they went about their daily routines.

There is simply no time for elaborate sets: Nollywood directors and crews make do with what they can.

I saw two video documentaries (by Journeyman Pictures, links above) on YouTube recently that gave fairly decent overviews of Nollywood. The second video includes interviews with some successful directors, mainly Ralph Nwadike; an actor, Hank, whose I-am-a-big-man attitude, sports cars and fancy motorbikes reminded me of Salman Khan; Nollywood’s most popular actress and heart-throb, Stephanie Okereke; and a 25-year old director and scriptwriter, Chinny Ahaneku, on the sets of her historical movie, Deceit of the Gods, set in a precolonial Igbo village. (The Igbo are one of the major ethnic groups in Nigeria.)
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Let’s go on the set of Deceit of the Gods for a bit.

The movie is being shot in a village in Eastern Nigeria, with much effort expended on costumes and authenticity. The villain in movie is an evil priest who sacrifices children and twins; there is also an evil forest - readers of Chinua Achebe’s famous Things fall Apart will be familiar with these cultural aspects of precolonial Igbo society.

At some point in the story, a white priest needs to appear and introduce Christianity to the village. But the director, Chinny, has not planned for a white actor. In a hilarious moment that is representative of the spontaneity with which Nollywood movies are made, she requests a cameraman, Jacques, a white South African – in fact the only white person in the village at the time – with no acting experience to fill in the role.

“But I have never acted,” he protests.

“Acting starts in a day; everything starts in a day!” Chinny pleads.

Jacques agrees reluctantly. He slips into a “tight-fitting and excruciatingly hot white robe”. Chinny had planned a minor role for him, but, in yet another unplanned twist, Jacques becomes a major actor in the movie and has to act for two full days.

To the evil priest and king of the village, the colonial priest delivers such solemn sermons as: “Idol worship and human sacrifice is from the devil. But if you accept God Almighty, he will save from all Evil!”

The movie ends on a feel-good note. The evil heathen priest is driven away; the king and the villagers accept the word of God preached by the white priest and convert to Christianity. The villagers dance to celebrate this happy event. Chinny herself plays the king’s bride, bringing in the love angle. (Again video here.)

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I found the movie's main premise fascinating because its happy ending is diametrically opposed to the climax of Chinua Achebe's literary classic Things fall Apart. Achebe’s story too is about a precolonial Igbo village that has its own rules and hierarchy. It also has the same customs that seem strange today – such as sacrificing twins in the evil forest. Here too Christianity comes and declares that heathen ways should be given up. But the end result is not only an end to cruel customs, but also a complete breakdown of Igbo society. The ambivalence produced by the arrival of Christianity, and the collapse of Igbo society as it was then is at the heart of Things fall Apart; it takes up only a 30 odd pages, but Achebe does it brilliantly.

But in Nollywood, as in Bollywood, there has to be a clear resolution, the end has to be happy, and that’s why Deceit of the Gods ends in simplistic fashion, with villagers joyously converting. And why not? Who wants to see it end seriously?

Let's commemorate the Potato!

Don’t you think the world should be paying tribute to the potato, that ubiquitous tuber, the essential ingredient into so many dishes, from masala dosas to beer-battered fries to its mashed form that is indispensable to Americans on Thanksgiving? Just yesterday I myself cooked and enjoyed potatoes for dinner with onions, garlic, turmeric and some red chili powder.

Indeed, the United Nations too has recognized the need to commemorate: 2008, it has declared, is the International Year of the Potato. This might sound comical, but if you look at the economic impact of the potato over the last five hundred years it’s quite appropriate. Which is why The Economist also has a series of articles in its latest issue acknowledging contributions. Consider this one, Spud we like:

Unlikely though it seems, the potato promoted economic development by underpinning the industrial revolution in England in the 19th century. It provided a cheap source of calories and was easy to cultivate, so it liberated workers from the land. Potatoes became popular in the north of England, as people there specialised in livestock farming and domestic industry, while farmers in the south (where the soil was more suitable) concentrated on wheat production. By a happy accident, this concentrated industrial activity in the regions where coal was readily available, and a potato-driven population boom provided ample workers for the new factories. Friedrich Engels even declared that the potato was the equal of iron for its “historically revolutionary role”.

And how can we forget what it did to Ireland in 1845, when a million died and a million others emigrated?

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Delve deeper into history and we find that the potato wasn’t even available to Europe, Asia and Africa before the 16th century. Not only that, tomatoes, maize and chilies were not available either– yes chilies too were absent, believe it or not! The inescapable conclusion is that food must have been quite dull before the Spanish sailed to the Americas and brought back these culinary treasures. All these crops were first domesticated in Mexico, Central or South America a very long time ago. Potatoes were first domesticated in Peru 7000 years ago; the country now has 3500 edible varieties.

Here's the important lesson. There are many things today that we enjoy and take for granted. But if we understand their origins well, we learn that had it not been for trade and exchanges across cultures – the phenomenon we call globalization today, and which is much-maligned – we wouldn’t be enjoying them at all. And just because something comes from a different, faraway land does not mean that a community or culture or nation cannot add its own distinctness to that import. Did the Italians not combine pasta with tomato, a New World crop, to come up with something that is considered uniquely theirs?

Needless to say, this doesn’t apply only to food, vegetables and crops; there are parallels in a host of other areas. One only has to look.
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Both pictures from The Economist. And an earlier post on another thing we take for granted: agriculture. And an even earlier post on how the supercontinent Pangaea broke into the continents of today, and how after 1492 the seams of Pangaea have been knitted again, not literally but through a massive exchange of crops, animals and people, now called the Columbian Exchange.

The Brothers Karamazov - a quick note

The last time I wrote about The Brothers Karamazov, I complained about the book being long-winded. I'd been reading Constance Garnett’s translation at the time. Thanks to Chandrahas' suggestion, I used the Pevear-Volokhonsky translation for the remaining two thirds of the book. And how the pages flew by! The Brothers Karamazov is now undoubtedly one of my all time favorites.

In the introduction, Richard Pevear claims to have kept Dostoevsky’s idiosyncrasies of prose intact so as to retain the humor. TBK may be considered a dark, tragic book, and sure it is that, but it is also exceptionally funny, so much that I burst out laughing in the most unexpected places, even when such serious matters as parricide were involved.

TBK is also, I feel, a spiritual book in many ways, and I’d like to retain the book’s intensity – its unrelenting questions about sin, conscience, loving and forgiving – as long as I can. I’ll try to write about my interpretation of the book’s themes in a longer post. For the moment, though, a couple of earlier posts on Dostoevsky: 1 and 2.

Satire of the highest quality

in this recently begun but already enormously popular blog called Stuff White People Like. Just a glance at the posts there will tell you why the blog is generating so many hits. It exploits the stereotype, uses sweeping generalizations (what's interesting is that if the same approach were used in other cases, it would most definitely be considered offensive) and the deliberately staid tone of the writing takes care of the humor. For instance, here’s a hilarious excerpt from a piece about recycling:

Recycling is a part of a larger theme of stuff white people like: saving the earth without having to do that much.

Recycling is fantastic! You can still buy all the stuff you like (bottled water, beer, wine, organic iced tea, and cans of all varieties) and then when you’re done you just put it in a DIFFERENT bin than where you would throw your other garbage. And boom! Environment saved! Everyone feels great, it’s so easy!

Or, consider this piece about white people studying abroad:

In addition to accumulating sexual partners, binge drinking, drug use and learning, white people consider studying abroad to be one of the most important parts of a well rounded college education.

Study Abroad allows people to leave their current educational institution and spend a semester or a year in Europe or Australia. Though study abroad are offered to other places, these two are the overwhelming favorites.

By attending school in another country, white people are technically living in another country. This is important as it gives them the opportunity to insert that fact into any sentence they please. “When I used to live in [insert country], I would always ride the train to school. The people I’d see were inspiring.”

Khatami quote

Via Chandrahas, I learned of this wonderful quote by, no not some well known literary star, but from Mohammad Khatami, the former President of Iran. I don’t know much about Khatami or his political record – except that he seemed someone who promoted a conciliatory rather than a confrontational tone – but I like very much what he says below:

One goal of dialogue among cultures and civilizations is to recognize and to understand not only the cultures and civilizations of others, but those of one's own. We could know ourselves by taking a step away from ourselves and embarking on a journey away from self and homeland and eventually attaining a more profound appreciation of our true identity. It is only through immersion into another existential dimension that we could attain mediated and acquired knowledge of ourselves in addition to the immediate and direct knowledge of ourselves that we commonly possess. Through seeing others we attain a hitherto impossible knowledge of ourselves. [my italics]

Yes, there’s some rhetoric in the quote, but the last sentence captures the gist beautifully, and is spot on!

The resettlement of refugee farmers after Partition: Notes from Ramachandra Guha's India after Gandhi

We all know that the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947 had terrible consequences. Tens of thousands of people died. Millions were displaced: Muslims left India for Pakistan, and Hindus and Sikhs left Pakistan for India. It was the greatest mass migration in history. But what is less understood is the manner in which the vast numbers of refugees were accommodated and settled into the newly divided regions. The greatest mass migration in history inevitably became the largest resettlement operation in the world.

How was this monumental task achieved? That question might take up many books, and perhaps many have already been written. But we get an exquisite glimpse of how it was done in the Indian side of the Punjab (East Punjab) in Refugees and the Republic a chapter in Ramachandra Guha’s sweeping post-independence historical narrative India after Gandhi. Indeed, the book’s great appeal lies in its ability to tell of scores of such forgotten stories, give quick but illuminating glimpses, while still not losing sight of the larger political narrative.

Punjab was one of the partitioned provinces; the eastern part found itself in India while the western in Pakistan. A large number of Muslims had left East Punjab for Pakistan. But there was an even greater influx of Hindus and Sikhs into the east from Pakistan. Most of these refugees were farmers. Together they had abandoned 2.7 million hectares of land in Western Punjab but across the border in India where they now had to make a living only 1.9 million hectares had been left behind by Muslim farmers who had fled the opposite way. Not only that, the new lands were also less fertile than the richer, abundantly irrigated soils they had been cultivating in the west.

The unenviable task of reallocating the reduced acreage of land fell upon the Indian government and its civil service workers. As a first step, they assigned each family of refugee farmers 4 hectares irrespective of its past holding; they also gave loans to buy seed and equipment. As families began to sustain themselves, applications were invited for them to claim more land, depending on what they had owned in West Punjab. Within a month, there were 500,000 claims! These claims were then “verified in open assemblies consisting of other migrants from the same village. As each claim was read out by a government official, the assembly approved, amended or rejected it.”

Refugees tended to exaggerate of course, but were deterred by the open assembly method; if a claim turned out to be false they were punished by a reduction in land. Nearly 7000 officials were needed to support this difficult and complicated process; these officials “came to constitute a kind of refugee city of their own.”

Sardar Tarlok Singh of the Indian civil service and a graduate of the London School of Economics led the rehabilitation operation. He used two interesting rules for allocating land, and this is where the innovation and pragmatism in the whole operation comes most clearly to light. Though claims had been filed, because of the reduced acreage, none of the refugees could be assigned as much land as they'd originally owned. Everybody’s claim had to be reduced by a certain percentage. Plus, there had to be some way of accounting for the differing fertility of land.

Sardar Tarlok Singh came up with two measures, the standard acre and the graded cut, which dealt with these issues, and this is how:

A standard acre was defined as that amount of land which could yield ten to eleven maunds of rice. (A maund is about 40 kilograms.) In the dry, unirrigated districts of the east, four physical acres were equivalent to one standard acre; but in the lush “canal colonies” [where irrigation was strong], one physical acre was about equal to one standard acre. The innovative concept of the standard acre took care of the variations in soil and climate across the province.

The idea of the graded cut, meanwhile, helped overcome the large discrepancy between the land left behind by the refugees and the land now available to them – a gap that was close to million acres. For the first ten acres of any claim, a cut of 25% was implemented – thus one got only 7.5 acres instead of ten. For higher claims the cuts were steeper: 30% between ten and 30 acres, and on upward, so that those having more than 500 acres were taxed at the rate of 95%.

With this rule, there clearly were losers, and the losers, of course, were those who had once owned huge tracts of land. Here’s an ironic example:

The biggest single loser was a woman named Vidyawati who had inherited land (and lost) her husband’s estate of 11,500 acres spread across thirty-five villages of the Gujranwala and Sialkot districts. In compensation she was allotted mere 835 acres in a single village of Karnal.

Standard acre and graded gut are simple rules, but their simplicity helped in solving a complex, very large-scale land allotment problem that involved thousands of people. By November 1949, about a year and a half since the operation began, Tarlok Singh had made 250000 allotments distributed equitably across the districts of East Punjab. Not only that, “neighbors and families were resettled together, although the recreation of entire village communities proved impossible.” The resettlements were so successful that “by 1950, a depopulated countryside was alive once again.”

The sheer scale of the effort is mind-boggling. Imagine the paperwork, the records that had to be kept and retrieved; imagine the disputes, the flared tempers, the jealousies; but imagine most of all the perseverance, the unflagging determination. It is upon such efforts – largely ignored yet involving the sweat and toil of thousands – that nations are built.

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Related notes:

1. Guha ends this section in the chapter poignantly. The resettlement, Guha says, may have been successful, but the general sense of loss could not be undone. The migrating Sikhs had left behind a beloved place of worship, Nankana Sahib, the birthplace of the founder of their faith, Guru Nanak. Muslims migrating from East Punjab too had left behind the town of Qadian, the center of the Ahmadiya sect of Islam; the Ahmadiya mosque was visible for miles around. Very few Muslims now lived in Qadian, which was full of Hindu and Sikh refugees. Guha quotes the editor of the Calcutta newspaper Statesman, who wrote that in both Qadian and Nankana Sahib there was “the conspicuous dearth of daily worshippers, the aching emptiness, the sense of waiting, of hope and…of faith fortified by humbling affliction.”

2. The picture shows a boy at a Delhi refugee camp in 1947. Here’s the source. The largest refugee camp, though, was at Kurukshetra, consisting of nearly 300,000 people. For their entertainment, film projectors were brought in and Disney specials featuring Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck were screened at night. It was, as one social worker described it, a “two-hour break from reality”.

My adventures during a queuing study

Here’s my account of a class project I did back at Arizona State University. The class was about the mathematics of queues, but this light (and hopefully funny) account centers around my adventures while I did my project. There are a few technical terms here and there – Exponential distribution, Poisson arrivals, goodness of fit tests – but they shouldn’t hinder the flow of the piece.

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In Spring 2003, I took a class on Queuing Theory as part of my PhD coursework at Arizona State University. One of the assignments towards the end of the term was to apply the queuing models we’d learned to a real situation. Expectedly, students headed to the nearest fast food chains, banks, traffic signals and congested elevators to diligently conduct their studies. A not-so-small number headed to their friends to just as diligently pilfer projects from prior years and repackage them as their own work.

I headed to the nearest Safeway grocery store. Why? Because I’ve been fascinated with American grocery stores from the time I first stepped into one. There is something in the size of these stores, the bright lighting, the glittering array of produce and processed food along aisles – vegetables that have so much sparkle as to seem unreal (strangely they do not taste as good as they look); monstrous bags of potato chips; boxes with muffins, their tops bursting with nuts and chocolate; an entire aisle for ice creams only – there is something in this abundance that leaves me agape. Such a cornucopia would have doubtless entered the dreams of Early Man resting in his cave next to his precious hunting tools; and doubtless, waking up the next day, he might have resolved to change the world around him to achieve that dream.

But to return to the particulars of my queuing project. The Friday before Easter, I sat outside the entrance of the Safeway store, next to the vending machine and bike stand, with a stopwatch, pen and piece of paper. I felt later that I might have been thought of as homeless, but this didn’t cross my mind then. I was too absorbed recording the arrival time of every customer into the store from 5 to 7 pm (A group such as a family or that arrived in the same car, I considered as a single customer.) I wanted to see whether the great claim made by mathematicians and queuing theorists about arrivals was true: the claim that the rate of arrivals, if they are sufficiently random and independent (as they are expected to be at a grocery store), follows a Poisson distribution; or conversely, the distribution of inter-arrival times is Exponential.

The plot of inter-arrival times did indeed look exponential. On average a customer arrived at the store every 15 seconds; the standard deviation was 16.25 seconds, quite high, but not unexpected given the distribution. The data cleared goodness of fit tests with flying colors. I was excited! A fundamental assumption in many queuing models is that inter-arrival times are exponentially distributed, and here I had empirical confirmation of this from data I had painstakingly collected.

But arrival data was only the first part of my project. I planned to explore whether there were enough cashiers in the store to sustain this arrival rate, and if queues were reasonable. Since I now had to collect data in the store, I approached the manager, Scott.

I had seen Scott on my weekly shopping visits. He was a tall man, with blonde hair and an erect and dignified bearing. He was usually dressed formally in a white shirt and striped tie. He looked grim - I'd never seen him smile - but was always attentive to his customers' needs. “Hi,” he often said sagely to them. “Are you finding everything you need? Can I help you with anything?”
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I explained my project to Scott, and told him it could be useful to the store. He looked at me skeptically. A frown creased his forehead.

“You can’t ask customers any questions. That’s just not permitted.”

“Oh, no, it’s nothing like that. I won’t be asking anything, just recording data on how many come in to the store, at what time,” – I’d already done that with arrivals but I didn’t mention it – “and doing a queuing study that may yield benefits to the store. Maybe I’ll learn something that Safeway can implement.”

It wasn’t the strongest pitch. Scott was still unconvinced and the frown remained. But he agreed. So I began doing rounds at the store, trying to remain inconspicuous, getting a sense of what people did, the amount of time they spent in queues, and the time checkout cashiers took to service them.

I was intrigued particularly by the rack or shelf that extended in front of each of the checkout counters. They consisted of the latest magazines, chocolates and candy with colorful wrappings, and such odds and ends as batteries. Customers would choose a magazine and toss it into their cart as they waited, their curiosity no doubt piqued by George Clooney's most recent affair or the most recent adoption from Cambodia, Kazakhstan or Malawi by a high profile actress - all this brazenly announced in The National Enquirer or People. Kids, on the other hand, would insist on having candy. Since a significant number purchased something from the rack – it was a reflex for some – I wondered if queues were really so bad after all. Sure, queues shouldn’t be too long for that can be frustrating, but maybe it actually helps the store to lengthen queues just a wee bit and provide an extra magazine or candy rack.

I dealt with this in my project, though with the deadline approaching I could only scratch the surface. The details are too specific and convoluted to mention here, but I proposed a modified single server queuing model where queues are profitable, so long as they are not longer than the length of the rack (usually 4-5 people). I don’t think I did enough for the model to give any insights as far as Safeway was concerned, but I sure was excited with this seemingly perverse idea of increasing queue sizes.

The other analysis I did was standard, garden-variety stuff: Were there too few or too many cashiers? The answer was not simple. The store had a floating set of employees who would do other jobs in the store but when queues started building they would be called using the announcement system to open a new checkout counter. Thus lines never got out of control, and employees could be used flexibly to do other odd jobs at the store during periods of lull. I figured my fancy math models with their set of assumptions weren't really applicable. After all, what could I suggest about staffing from my short visits that Safeway employees and the ever grave Scott hadn’t already figured from years of experience? There do exist other situations where a fresh perspective can help spot obvious flaws or suggest improvements, but this didn’t seem like one. Besides, people working in settings such as Safeway have rudimentary but intuitive ideas they develop themselves, and which they adapt with the passage of time and with experience; they don’t need degrees in mathematics or operations research to develop this intuition.
____

Finally, to finish this rather long post, here's how my project related visits to Safeway came to an abrupt end. I was trying to collect cashier service times – I’d already collected enough but wanted some more. My modus operandi was to choose a cashier, retreat to the rear of the corresponding aisle and observe from there. I couldn’t retreat too far since I wouldn’t have a clear view and I couldn’t be too close either for fear of attracting attention. Whatever my little tricks, there must have been an inadvertent surreptitiousness to my actions, for my eyes met once with a curly haired cashier’s and lingered for a while. He picked up the phone; I thought it was to address some customer issue. But a minute later, I heard a familiar voice behind me.

“Hi,” the voice said sagely. “How are you doing?”

Scott was dressed as usual: plain white shirt and striped tie. He wasn’t happy. “You’re making people nervous,” he said.

“But I informed you already that I would be collecting data in the store – I was trying to do it covertly so as not to disturb!”

“Yes, but you have to tell me when you intend to come in so I can warn my employees and so they don’t get edgy about some stranger spying on them, stopwatch in hand.”

I saw his point. Scott was just being a good manager. I agreed to inform him in the future, but I never returned – mostly because I had enough data for my project, but also because I was worried about becoming notorious as an undercover data collector. What if harassed employees were to put up an enlarged mug of mine at various locations with the stopwatch cord serving as a noose and a bold red “BEWARE OF THIS MAN!” stamped diagonally across? Even worse, what if I were to be booted out of the store? How then would I buy the enticements along the aisles - bags of Lays, delectable Entenmanns pastries, desserts of Pepperidge Farms, things I had come to depend so much on?

So, you'll understand why I receded wisely, wrote up my project report, got a good grade, and continued to be an anonymous customer - one of the 'Poisson-arriving' masses!

Suketu Mehta on napping

There’s an long and interesting interview of Suketu Mehta, author of the famous non-fiction book on Mumbai, Maximum City, in the Believer magazine. The interview reveals a lot about his background and his struggle to become a writer. All that might seem very serious, but Mehta’s answers are often playful. In my view, he makes his most salient point in the beginning of the interview, when he talks about laziness as an asset, and more specifically about the regenerative effects of taking naps during the day.

I couldn’t agree more, given that I close my office door, not, as is assumed, for privacy and work, but for deep, immensely satisfying and refreshing 20-minute naps. There’s nothing more annoying that a jarring knock on the door that interrupts this sojourn of mine back into the world of dreams. Anyway, here’s Mehta:

You know, Bertrand Russell wrote an essay extolling sloth. I think [that’s] the difference between civilized and uncivilized society—societies where the afternoon nap is a regular feature. I nap every day, wherever I am. I have a big lunch, which I cook myself, and then I nap for at least an hour. It’s like having a second morning. The kind of stuff one writes after getting up from morning sleep and afternoon sleep is very different. When you get up from morning sleep, you’re writing straight from dreams. For me it’s much more wildly creative. But if I need to do detailed work—editing or paying my bills or writing a new scene for a nonfiction article in which facts are more important, then I write it after my afternoon nap. Someone should do a study on writers and their sleep habits and how that influences their work. Who wrote what sections of what book after sleeping at what time?

Interview link via Amitava's blog. I like Believer interviews; here's my post on a different Believer interview, The necessary vanity of a writer, from last year.