On Loiuse Erdrich's The Plague of Doves

There’s a scene about ninety odd pages into Louise Erdrich’s The Plague of Doves that is illustrative, in a tangential way, of what her book is about. Two of the novel’s single and middle-aged characters, Judge Antone Bazil Coutts and Geraldine, and are just beginning to know each other. They are out a boat, fishing, when something heavy tugs Geraldine’s line. They find it is a large turtle and lug it up. For some strange reason that is puzzling to Coutts, Geraldine becomes glum. Why? Because engraved on the shell of the turtle are the letters “G and R”. They stand for Geraldine and her former boyfriend Roman. Roman had caught the same turtle when he and Geraldine had been fishing a long time ago. The turtle was small then. Roman had etched the letters and set it free. He is no longer alive, but his memory has unexpectedly cropped up in the form of these engraved letters now, at beginning of a different romance in Geraldine’s life.

The theme of Erdrich’s novel is how the past perpetually influences the present in subtle and unexpected ways. Except that the past isn’t restricted the painful memory of one’s first love. In The Plague of Doves it spans three generations, and straddles the histories of two communities in North Dakota: the community of American Indians, who steadily lost their lands in the late nineteenth century and were shepherded into reservations, and the community of white immigrants who went through their own travails as they expanded westward. But the story isn’t the conflict between the two. Rather it is how their shared history – of suspicion and mistrust but also of help and interaction – has evolved and intertwined in complex ways and influenced the succeeding two generations. As Evelina Harp, who is part Ojibwe and part white and the youngest of the first person narrators in the novel, says:

“Now that some of us have mixed in the spring of our existence both guilt and victim, there is no unraveling the rope.”

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The Plague of Doves centers on the brutal killing in 1911 of a white farm family in Pluto, North Dakota. Only a seventeen-month-old baby survives. Evidence is unclear as to who is responsible, but in the rage that grips the town, three Indians are lynched by a vigilante mob. The murders and the lynching hover like a dark shadow in the decades after. The people involved in the lynching, the Indians who are lynched, the baby that is left to survive: everyone becomes part of a complex puzzle that Erdrich slowly unveils in her jagged narrative which jumps in time and perspective. Judge Coutts, whose tone is the most direct and calming of all – reflective of his character and his vocation – makes this pithy remark:

“Nothing that happens, nothing, is not connected here by blood.”

Consider this: Evelina Harp is the granddaughter of Mooshum, a full-blood Ojibwe, one of the four Indians who discovered the murdered farm family. Evelina has a crush on Corwin Peace whose great-grandfather, Cuthbert Peace, was one of the Indians lynched. Cuthbert’s brothers Henri and Lafayette Peace, both excellent fiddle players, helped guide Judge Coutts’s grandfather in the nineteenth century while he was prospecting on the frontier (the theme of music and how it is passed on is one of the beautiful parts of the novel). Judge Coutts, a mixed-blood himself, is interested, as I have already pointed out, in Evelina’s aunt, Geraldine. And so it goes on and on – I have revealed only the basic details. In fact, these links are so complicated and wondrous, that I often stopped to write them out and draw the genealogy myself. That is what Evelina does too in the novel:

“I traced the blood history of the murders through my classmates and friends until I could draw our elaborate spider webs of lines and intersecting circles. I drew in pencil. There were a few people, one of them being Corwin Peace, whose chart was so complicated that I erased parts of it until I wore right through the paper. Still I could not erase the questions underneath…”

While Erdrich’s many narrators meander abstractly – sometimes too abstractly for my liking – this vast all-encompassing web of connections and the unsolved case of the farm murders sustain and are the heart of the narrative. In fact, Erdrich’s plotting is so intricate that the full details become known only in the last few pages. There is no gimmickry here; everything is revealed in a matter of fact way.

Certain characterizations and moments in the novel stand out: Mooshum, the shriveled old Indian, who brings much needed humor by way of his discursions with the Catholic priest; Shamengwa, Mooshum’s brother, and a passionate fiddle player, whose story about how he began playing and found his fiddle is the most poignant in the book; and Billy Peace, whose unsettling transformation from a shy, frail young man to a monstrous, insatiable leader of a religious sect, is depicted brilliantly through the perspective of his wife, Marn Wolde.

By peopling her novel with such diverse voices and by setting it across three generations, Erdrich has written a compelling, imaginative history. It is not the sort of dreary history one finds in books by overly serious historians. Erdrich's is a beautiful, melancholy history, held together by subtle familial interconnections that lend an uncanny symmetry to it.

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Other notes:

1. If you are curious about the title of the novel, read the first chapter in The New Yorker.

2. Erdrich runs the independent bookstore Birchbark Books in Minneapolis.

Sarkar-Raj, and unforgettable dialogues

I drove an hour and forty minutes last Saturday to watch Sarkar-Raj. The gently swaying Minnesota prairie, fed by recent rains, was lush and beautiful, and it was just as well that I enjoyed the drive. For the movie, while it had some drama and a decent plot, was disappointing. I have to agree with Namrata Joshi’s stinging critique in Outlook India:

The support cast is nothing more than a gallery of caricatures complete with a gloved hand killer straight from the Hollywood slasher films. What was the need to have him there? It’s such gimmickry that irritates. Specially in Verma’s stylistic and technical flourishes. Extreme close-ups, angular shots, monochromatic palette, loud background score, deliberately smart lines, wordplay, the constant confrontations and tension—he goes on an overkill with it all. A lovely Mumbai slang that aptly describes the film—thakeli. It’s deadbeat, dull and dreary.

The villains are pretty hackneyed in the movie. They contort their faces, smirk, act idiosyncratically, and generally try very hard to convince us they are very, very bad people. One of them – and this might well be the funniest bit of the movie, though unintentional – says something along these lines:

“Omlette banane ke liye anda phodna padta hai.” (To make an omlette one has to first break the egg.)

This profound, cryptic and richly metaphorical remark refers to Abhishek Bachchan (in the movie the son of the powerful Mumbai politician, Sarkar). Abhishek is apparently is the egg. Later the same villain makes a further remark that that bad guys will become the masala (spices) in the omlette.

What are we to make of this?

But dialogues like this are a delight too – they are so ridiculous they become the very reason one watches certain Bollywood movies. I have to confess that I regret – because of the excessive travel I’ve been doing this year – not seeing Race, which had this gem:

“Zindagi ki race me insaan ko ek saathi ki zaroorat hai.” (In the race that is life, one needs a companion.)

Oh, I’d give anything to hear this uttered on the big screen!

Mohammed Hanif's A Case of Exploding Mangoes

There’s been plenty of positive publicity for Mohammed Hanif’s new novel A Case of Exploding Mangoes. One of the novel’s main draws appears to be a delightful satirical portrait of General Zia. (Quick aside: with a moustache as funny as his, how can a despot like him not be satirized?) Some links: New York Times review here; first chapter here; and Outlook India article here where Dalrymple heralds the emergence of new Pakistani writing - what with Mohammad Aslam, Kamila Shamsie, Mohsin Hamid among others coming up with excellent books.

A Case of Exploding Mangoes also finds mention in The Middle Stage with regard to a character called OBL. Who is OBL? This excerpt from the Nytimes review tells us:

The most darkly funny scene in “A Case of Exploding Mangoes” imagines a Fourth of July party in Islamabad in 1988, hosted by Arnold Raphel. The American guests dress up in flowing turbans, tribal gowns and shalwar kameez suits, by way of ridiculous homage to the Afghan fighters. Among the invited guests is a young bearded Saudi known as “OBL,” who works for “Laden and Co. Constructions.” As OBL moves through the throng, various people stop to greet him and chat. Among them is the local C.I.A. chief who, after swapping a few words, bids him farewell: “Nice meeting you, OBL. Good work, keep it up.”

Bhartihari's solemn dilemma

Ancient India, we are endlessly told, was very open to sexuality and its representations – the Kamasutra and this orgy from the temples of Khajuraho are oft cited. Given that Indians are more conservative now (I know, it's a broad generalization), I’ve always wondered what happened in the intermediate historical period that changed attitudes. William Dalrymple’s recent essay in NYRB gives a few insights, but it principally discusses expressions of sexuality in south India – in the Pallava and Chola eras – and in the Tantric tradition.

There are some serious thoughts in the essay and I encourage you to read it. But if you want something in the lighter vein, don't by any means miss this bit that pertains to a dilemma that a 3rd century poet, Bhartihari, faced: Should one adopt a life of austerity and asceticism, or give in to the temptations of unabashed physical lust? Bhartihari seems to have pondered the question very seriously as Dalrymple illustrates:

Classical India developed a refined and tutored sophistication about the finer points of sexuality, famously so in the Kamasutra, the principal work on love in Sanskrit literature. It has never been equaled; yet there has always been a strong tension in Hinduism between the ascetic and the sensual. The poet Bhartrihari, who probably lived in the third century AD, around the time of the composition of the Kamasutra, oscillated no less than seven times between the rigors of the monastic life and the abandon of the sensualist. "There are two paths," he wrote. "The sages' religious-devotion, which is lovely because it overflows with the nectarous waters of the knowledge of truth," and "the lusty undertaking of touching with one's palm that hidden part in the firm laps of lovely-limbed women, loving women with great expanses of breasts and thighs."

"Tell us decisively which we ought to attend upon," he asks in the Shringarashataka. "The sloping sides of wilderness mountains? Or the buttocks of women abounding in passion?"

Any answers?

A scene from Om Shanti Om

I found Om Shanti Om immensely entertaining. The movie was needlessly long and wallowed in precisely the sort of mushy, sentimental stuff it was trying to parody, but despite all its obvious drawbacks, it was a joy to watch – the songs and the comedy bits were wonderful.

There’s one particular scene I’ll remember and cherish for long. I’ve watched it a couple of times since, but the effect when I saw it on the big screen here in Rochester last November (yes, even this small, unheard-of Minnesota town screens Bollywood films) remains unsurpassed.

Some background: Om (Sharukh Khan) is a junior artiste in the 70s, hoping to make it big in Bollywood. He has an overpowering infatuation for Shantipriya (Deepika Padukone), the most popular actress of the time. Despite being only a chota-mota artiste Om believes, true filmi style, that they are made for each other. His mother – the quintessential, melodramatic, weepy Bollywood mom – gives him a sacred red thread with a metal band, blessed by the Sai Baba at Shirdi. Om wears this on his wrist, and, as he discovers later, these blessings do indeed help twine him with Shantipriya.

Now to the actual scene. It's the premiere of Dreamy Girl, Shantipriya’s latest film. Crowds throng at the theater where a red carpet will be rolled for the entire cast. Om is in the crowd, straining to get a glimpse of the arriving stars. He’s wearing a tacky red and black checked suit, while the others in the crowd sport more identifiable 70s style clothing: colorful bell-bottomed pants and shirt collars as large as whale fins.



Then it happens. A large limousine stops in front of the theater, and Shantipriya steps out in a pink dress. She is strikingly beautiful. Her hair is done the way Asha Parekh used to have hers done – neatly bunched around the head, adorned with sparkling jewels. Also at this point, the camera shifts to slow motion, and the melodious Aankhon me teri begins. Om is astounded by Shantipriya’s beauty, and, like dozens of others in the crowd, tentatively raises his hand to wave at her. Shantipriya waves to the crowd, acknowledging their cheers, a radiant, disarming smile on her face.

As she passes Om, the red thread (or the metal band: doesn’t really matter) on Om’s wrist somehow gets entangled in Shantipriya’s pink pallu. He is propelled forward, his hand outstretched as it trails the pallu. A few steps later, Shantipriya, oblivious up to then, feels a tug, and looks back. Her expression is one of bewilderment, before she realizes what has happened. She then smiles a knowing, killer smile, disentangles the pallu from the thread. As the security guards drag Om away, his face is one of contentment – so happy is he at having met her in this fortuitous fashion that he closes his eyes in bliss and has one hand over his heart.

What’s so special about this? What makes it wonderful? Two things: First the song, Aankhon me teri, couldn’t have been more appropriate: it matches superbly with how the scene unfolds in slow motion, and Deepika Padukone’s beauty and expressions accentuate the effect (she is impressive in the movie, especially the first half).

The second reason pertains to why Bollywood movies are a treat to watch: we indulge in a suspension of disbelief, and can completely immerse ourselves in the sentiments and the romance. As I sat in the movie hall watching the scene, I felt this strongly. I could feel too a twitter of yearning in my own heart, and I realized that the cynicism and weariness that one gathers from life could not overwhelm that thrilling, romantic moment in the movie. And I thought: aren’t feelings like this the essence of entertainment?
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Other related posts: some extracts of a long Bollywood-like story I wrote a few years ago; and a post on Nigerian cinema, probably the most vibrant movie industry in the world after Bollywood and Hollywood, and which, not unsurprisingly, is called Nollywood.

Changes

Changed the blog template, as you will have noticed. I was away on a trip, and came back to find that all my settings in the old template had been altered. Not sure how that happened. But luckily, this new template seems to work well, so I'll stick to it.

Things have been exceptionally busy the last couple of weeks. It's been a stressful period, with changes coming up in the next couple of months. Looks at this point that I'll be moving places in the fall - east of the Mississippi for the first time. More on that later.

For now, I need to buckle down and put in some extra hours writing.

Octavio Paz on modernity

I’ve quoted Octavio Paz a couple of times, and here he is once more: this time I pick from his dense and wide-ranging Nobel speech. The theme that ties it all together all is that elusive creature, modernity. What does Paz have to say? Consider, first, his thoughts on the connection between tradition and modernity:

I am not sure whether this unexpected historical lesson has been learnt by all: between tradition and modernity there is a bridge. When they are mutually isolated, tradition stagnates and modernity vaporizes; when in conjunction, modernity breathes life into tradition, while the latter replies with depth and gravity.

So much in the world today is attributed to that supposed fissure between the two - and one seems to step on the foot of the other. But as Paz notes eloquently at the end of his speech, modernity is evanescent, not easily grasped; it is startling; it can use the very, very ancient to produce the new:

In this pilgrimage in search of modernity I lost my way at many points only to find myself again. I returned to the source and discovered that modernity is not outside but within us. It is today and the most ancient antiquity; it is tomorrow and the beginning of the world; it is a thousand years old and yet newborn. It speaks in Nahuatl, draws Chinese ideograms from the 9th century, and appears on the television screen. This intact present, recently unearthed, shakes off the dust of centuries, smiles and suddenly starts to fly, disappearing through the window. A simultaneous plurality of time and presence: modernity breaks with the immediate past only to recover an age-old past and transform a tiny fertility figure from the neolithic into our contemporary. We pursue modernity in her incessant metamorphoses yet we never manage to trap her. She always escapes: each encounter ends in flight. We embrace her and she disappears immediately: it was just a little air. It is the instant, that bird that is everywhere and nowhere. We want to trap it alive but it flaps its wings and vanishes in the form of a handful of syllables. We are left empty-handed. Then the doors of perception open slightly and the other time appears, the real one we were searching for without knowing it: the present, the presence.

It's a rather dramatic piece of prose - I've noticed in other essays too that Paz takes such flights - but his message couldn't have been more accurate.

Environmentalism - a worldwide secular religion

Freeman Dyson ends The Question of Global Warming - an essay in The New York Review of Books - with these passages that capture the essence of the issue:

All the books that I have seen about the science and economics of global warming, including the two books under review, miss the main point. The main point is religious rather than scientific. There is a worldwide secular religion which we may call environmentalism, holding that we are stewards of the earth, that despoiling the planet with waste products of our luxurious living is a sin, and that the path of righteousness is to live as frugally as possible. The ethics of environmentalism are being taught to children in kindergartens, schools, and colleges all over the world.

Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion. And the ethics of environmentalism are fundamentally sound. Scientists and economists can agree with Buddhist monks and Christian activists that ruthless destruction of natural habitats is evil and careful preservation of birds and butterflies is good. The worldwide community of environmentalists—most of whom are not scientists—holds the moral high ground, and is guiding human societies toward a hopeful future. Environmentalism, as a religion of hope and respect for nature, is here to stay. This is a religion that we can all share, whether or not we believe that global warming is harmful.

Unfortunately, some members of the environmental movement have also adopted as an article of faith the be-lief that global warming is the greatest threat to the ecology of our planet. That is one reason why the arguments about global warming have become bitter and passionate. Much of the public has come to believe that anyone who is skeptical about the dangers of global warming is an enemy of the environment. The skeptics now have the difficult task of convincing the public that the opposite is true. Many of the skeptics are passionate environmentalists. They are horrified to see the obsession with global warming distracting public attention from what they see as more serious and more immediate dangers to the planet, including problems of nuclear weaponry, environmental degradation, and social injustice. Whether they turn out to be right or wrong, their arguments on these issues deserve to be heard.

Sea of Poppies

Amitav Ghosh returns with a sprawling new novel, Sea of Poppies. Long extract here.

Thoughts on Alaa Aswany's The Yacoubian Building

While reading Alaa Al Aswany’s The Yacoubian Building I was reminded of Robert Altman’s movie Short Cuts. Altman is famous for his ensemble movie making, and in Short Cuts, he weaves Raymond Carver’s short stories into a web of intersecting lives. The result is an eclectic mix of personalities, each carrying his or her personal conflict, but appearing, often inadvertently and peripherally, in the trajectory of some other character. This technique, while disorienting since it shifts focus often, is able to portray a diversity and complexity not possible in more conventional methods.

In The Yacoubian Building too, Al Aswany uses a number of intertwining Egyptian characters assembled from all walks of life – the son of a doorkeeper; a rich businessman with political ambitions; a well-off elderly man with an incurable weakness for women; the daughter of a poor family, living in cramped quarters; a lonely newspaper editor yearning for a lasting relationship. All these characters are tied, one way or the other, to the Yacoubian Building in downtown Cairo: they either have their office space there, or live there, or visit the building to meet someone who lives there.

Through this cast of characters and an ever-shifting third person omniscient narrative, Alaa Aswany manages to convey the political and social changes Egypt has witnessed in the last fifty years: the move from monarchy to an authoritarian regime; the pull towards socialism and radical Islam; the struggle to eke a living amid the corruption that pervades society, where it matters who knows whom. Aswany does this not through a narration of facts, but instead through the actions, thoughts and the conflicts of the people in the novel.

Much is revealed, strikingly, through the frank sexuality that runs through the book. If we look closely, though, we see that Alaa Aswany doesn’t really dwell on the details of the lovemaking. Instead in the moments before an intimate encounter, or the contented moments after, we learn a lot about the characters – through their thoughts or the conversations they have with their partners. The author must surely believe we reveal ourselves the most when overcome with desire or when satiated.

Aswany also makes plenty of other astute observations. How, for instance, might a servant with an amputated leg cleverly use his handicap to appeal to the emotions of the most hard-hearted? (“…with a special move, suddenly bending his torso backward and pulling his worn, dirty gallabiya upward with both hands so that his truncated leg, attached to the depressingly dark-colored prosthesis, was displayed.”) How might a woman who has decided to use her body for some financial gain change in her attitudes?

“She had lost her compassion for people and thick crust of indifference had formed around her feelings – that disgust that afflicts the exhausted, the frustrated, and the perverted and prevents them from sympathizing with others. She had succeeded, after repeated attempts, in ridding herself of thoughts and feelings of remorse and buried forever the guilt that had afflicted her when she took off her dress in front of Talal and washed off his defilement, then put her hand out to him to collect ten pounds. She had become crueler, more bitter and daring, and no longer cared what the residents of the roof told one another about her reputation.”

Aswany seems especially adept at this sort of insight. The best one in the book, though, pertains to a young man, Taha, the son of the doorkeeper to the Yacoubian building.

Taha is studious and intelligent and is much better at school than the sons and daughters of more well off residents. But because of his father’s occupation – lowly in the eyes of those around him – he never gets the credit he deserves. He is looked upon condescendingly. He bears these implied insults and soldiers on, studies hard. His ambition is to become a police officer, and leave behind the life of squalor, poverty and humiliation in the Yacoubian building. He clears the required exams, and the last step – a mere formality – is to go through an interview process. He gets to the end of the interview successfully, but the presiding general, who up to then had admired Taha’s well rehearsed answers, looks through some papers, and asks him:

“Your father – what’s his profession Taha?”

“Civil servant, sir.”

“Civil servant or property guard?”

Taha is silent for a while, before he says in a low voice: “My father is a property guard, sir.”

Taha is not offered the job. He is frustrated and unable to get over it. But he eventually joins the university to study economics and political sciences. There, he meets a group of poor students of rural origin, and slowly through them gravitates towards Islam. He becomes close to Sheikh Shakir, the immensely popular leader of the Islamic political movement. Shakir becomes his spiritual mentor.

Taha is transformed after this experience. He was always religious but he is more ardent and serious now. He begins to see everybody around him in binaries: his worldview begins to absorb the absolutes of the faith. But the most striking transformation is how he feels within. He now has a dignity he never had before. Gone is the perpetual undercurrent of humiliation he felt because of his father’s occupation. One of the best passages of the book in my opinion is the following where Alaa Aswany describes this change in Taha:

“Those who knew Taha el Shazli in the past might have difficulty in recognizing him now. He has changed totally, as though he had swapped his former self for another, new one. It isn’t just a matter of Islamic dress that he has adopted in place of his Western clothes, nor of his beard, which he has let grow and which gives him a dignified and impressive appearance greater than his real age….All these are changes in appearance. Inside, however, he has been possessed by a new, powerful, bounding spirit. He has taken to walking, sitting, and speaking to people in the [Yacoubian] building in a new way. Gone forever are the old cringing humility and meekness before the residents. Now he faces them with self-confidence. He no longer cares a hoot for what they think, and he won’t put up with the least reproach or slight from them. He’s no longer interested in those small banknotes that they used to give him and which he used to save in order to buy his new things, in the first place because of his firm faith in God will provide for him and secondly because Sheikh Shakir has got him involved in the sale of religious books – small errands that he undertakes in his spare time and which bring him in a reasonable amount.”

This vital fact, this new sense of dignity we see in Taha, is not something we could have necessarily gleaned had Alaa Aswany not expressed it so well, with such clarity. The book is full of such moments, and Aswany's directness seems well rendered in Humphrey Davies’ translation. Not surprisingly The Yacoubian Building was a massive success in Egypt and now abroad as well.

Pankaj Mishra recently wrote about Aswany and his political views recently in the New York Times. Here you’ll find links to other reviews of the book. And The Yacoubian Building is now a movie as well.

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.

_____

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?