The King, the Knights and the People April 24, 2008

It is essential for me to begin by saying that I do not detest Shah Rukh Khan. We have had those coffee table conversations about him and his tendency to over-do things, be it in acting or in publicity and television shows. But my point of the argument (which is also a keen observation) is that when any personality attains a high enough position of unparalleled success, some people appreciate him, and some other sections of people become curious about such success. And such curiousity at the end of the day leads to pure loathing.

In spite of this, the news about Shah Rukh taking over a part of ownership of the Kolkata team in the cash rich cricket league seemed quite strange to me. He was more likely to take Mumbai – a place which is his own arena or the next likely Delhi. Why Kolkata?

Remember, and if you have been a follower of cricket you definitely will, that Kolkata has a huge history of crowd trouble. We are expert at throwing bottles when the game isn’t going to well. We have attained master’s degree in booing our very own team if Saurav Ganguly isn’t playing and the charge is actually led by our Chief Minister who is an ardent fan of Mr Ganguly, so much so that he supported South Africa when Saurav was dropped by the national selectors.

Anyway, past is past. While wondering about it for a while, I have realized that the reason why SRK has chosen Kolkata can be nothing except for the letter “K”. And he added one extra with “Knight” and that makes 1+1=2 Ks which should be enough to win the inaugural IPL. More on that later.

While most purists treat the IPL as “circus” the local media has been driven into frenzy. Sample the following excerpt after Sunday’s Match in Eden.

“The game itself never rose to expectations, but it had its little moments. What a sight it made, Adam Gilchrist in full throated appeal against Ricky Ponting, aghast at being given out leg before. Remember Christiano Ronaldo getting Michael Rooney thrown out of the world cup match on dubious foul claim? And then they went on to play happily for Manchester United“

This is the effect of SRK, his hysterics on the railings of the hospitality boxes, his continued acrobatic skills in full display and his marketing strategies which has made the media lose its mind. In fact the other day again in a local news channel when discussing about establishing loyalties, a certain celebrity remarked, “Its like the EPL. Why should there be a question of choosing? In the city of Manchester, there are two clubs, Manchester United and Manchester City, and a person may very well support both the teams at the same time!”

Thank you for that wonderful lesson of the day on EPL. Moving ahead, the team costume which is such a heated topic in every discussion board – be it in an Indian forum or the BBC- which has been designed by Manish Malhotra. Mr. Malhotra, who watched a live cricket match for the first time last Sunday has got out all the bling that there could be keeping the brand-SRK in mind. Though you and many of us think it is “hideous” and “right out of the yesteryears Indian mythological serials” it is very much fashionable (especially in the smouldering 42 degree heat in Calcutta) and also is in tune with Bengali sentiments, along with the classic adage “The Knights in Shining Armour”. See, black is taken right out of “Maa Kali” and gold signifies “pride”. To establish loyalties Saurav Ganguly has also been picked. I last saw him secretly being filmed by a news-less news channel haggling with a vegetable seller on the prices of cauliflowers. Anyway, his being the captain is a welcome change.

Lastly I would like to mention that SRK’s company Red chillies entertainment has been having a few disagreements with the CAB over proportion of profits of ticket prices which has linked to hints of sabotage on Eden horror pitch and light blackout. In my opinion, the move of inviting Rahul and Priyanka but not our honourable chief minister is a bad move on SRK’s part. He should understand to what extent the chief minister loves watching Saurav. And nothing should be taken away form the fact that a prominent part was played by the Bengal Government in changing the name of the city from Calcutta to Kolkata, a move without which SRK would never have bought this team. Also, when Hrithik Roshan performed in Salt Lake Stadium, he gave front row seats to Jyoti Basu and his entire family. There are more reasons why Buddha has been left sulking.

Looking ahead, Ricky Ponting and Brendan Mccullum are all going away for National duty. Shah Rukh Khan is going away for some International duty in Paris. So, I suppose we’ll have less of the dancing and more of the struggling.

The hyped and the overly-hyped March 11, 2007

These days, you may not find the inadequacy of methods at your disposal to waste your time and money.  I wouldn’t say that I did it unwillingly or unknowingly. It is more of knowing that you are wasting your time and money and then going ahead and doing it and then hoping that this might serve as a lesson for the future which unfortunately never does happen. 

This is no movie review of the blatantly hyped up film ‘Nishabd‘. I just want to keep a written record of my experience so that I do not go for another one of these extremely distressing cinema atleast for the next five years. 

Quite obviously, Mr Amitabh Bachchan can do nothing wrong. He is ‘emotionally involved’ with a girl who is 18 years old, he himself being 60. Notice, the girl isn’t 17, 16 or 15. She is 18. And that is stressed upon the promos time and time again. Amitabh Bachchan cannot be involved with a minor girl under no circumstances, so that’s pretty much dealt with. A 60 year old man’s wife is always the dullest human being living on this planet earth. The director can depict this because he has met all human beings living on this planet earth and such depiction does not in anyway signify that the 60 year old man might be attracted to an 18 year old or 26 or 72 or any woman who is an iota more interesting than his present wife. 

18 year old girls from Australia are essentially insolent, have accent which is in no way Australian, have uncontrollable urges to dance with hose pipes in front of the house while the friend’s dad turned peeping tom who is supposed to be a gifted photographer happily clicks away pictures, also have a love for lollipops [which again in no way transmits any underlying sexual advances to the friend's dad] and have the very healthy habit of poking tree branches in the friend’s dad’s ears while he is driving.   Also, when you do find out that your father is having an affair with your friend [who incidentally hasn't brought trousers from Australia] you can always go to America. You just need your father’s signatures on the papers which have been lying on your table since eternity.

 And to you who have sacrificed the love of your life for your wife and children — the hose pipes, the lollipops, the horrific accent, the poetry and the grammatical mistakes in speech is enough to keep you alive.

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That done, I reflect upon the next big hyped up event which is set to hit you on your head like a sledge-hammer even before you can say Hallelujah. It is the Cricket World Cup 2007, if you haven’t guessed it already.
India already has the best squad, the best batsmen, the best bowlers, the best physio, the best host, the best tarot card readers, the best advertisements, the best official cricket song, the best coverage and the best opinion leaders. And if you are not upbeat about our team’s chances at this world cup, then you deserve to be stranded in an island without food and water, or be cursed to live in the greater depths of hell and  certain other likewise terrible things will  happen to you. Funnily enough, Sachin Tendulkar advises people to remain calm and support the team in difficult times, which I think he foresees too clearly these days. Greg Chappell says we will make it to the semis and may be that is a realistic possibility. You can almost feel the inevitability creeping in even before the tournament starts.  

Most importantly, the timings are great this time. People would not feel that depressed and disgruntled. They would just feel sleepy. Not only because of the matches being telecasted in deeper hours of the night but also because of our performances.  And once we do get thrown out of the competition, we would have to pick someone amongst the remaining teams to support, since we Indians love cricket more than our Indian Cricket team. This is the Indian way of completely disregarding or rather hiding the fact, that India is only remotely competitive in no sport other than cricket and that is why we are forced to take interest in this sport. If there are people in this country who would really admit that they don’t like watching and talking about cricket and aren’t excited about the team’s chances  the fact is, that the end is always pleasant. You can always wear your ‘I-told-you-so’ look after everything is finished. 

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These days ongoing Board examinations also get as much as hype as the ‘how-stupid-can-you-get’ Union Budget on the news channels and newspapers. Recently, I read this article about the increase sales of books during such examinations. Like, a student who had found that ‘Together with Biology’ had got her lot of common questions in ICSE exams, sent her mother that day itself to buy ‘Together with Chemistry’ and ‘Together with Physics’. Her mother, like every other parent driven by the obsession of seeing her daughter do extensively well in examinations, bought them at once, without even questioning the relevance of such a purchase. 

Moreover, the sales of coffee, and Horlicks has increased to greater heights along with stationary and other items. Parents don’t question such purchases, they take greater care and concerned about their children, providing them with necessary or unnecessary amenities. They accompany them to examination centres, wait outside while the exams go on, and then scrutinize the question papers, discuss them with fellow students and classmates and satisfied they return home. While looking back at my tryst with the board examinations, I can never find my parents even remotely interested about providing any amenity or even showing greater concern. Surprisingly, if I needed coffee, that would be my job to make it, if I needed stationary that would be again me, and silly purchases on every pretext wasn’t acceptable.  The point is, I never liked my parents taking interest in my studies, once I entered adulthood. And I guess, it wasn’t the norm at my house as well. Once in a while, they would just remind me how important it was to concentrate on studies and how these exams built your base and that was about it.   

 It is when you enter college and graduate, you understand that the board examinations weren’t the be all and end all of your life, as your teachers or your acquaintances made it out to be. Yes, what is more important is to be motivated at every point in your life and once you lose it, failure is inevitable. Parents rarely make their children understand that.  The motivation to earn a fair result is entirely of a student and it can never be or rather it should never be shared by the parent.

In search of a good life December 25, 2006

In the beginning, I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. This December has been quite an eventful month, in more ways than one. It seems that the weather in Calcutta has also been influenced by the heated political activities going on in the state; hence the familiar chill in a December is yet to arrive. So, it’s not quite the Christmas time which we are used to here.

The 51^st Annual Convocation of Jadavpur University was held on Sunday, the 24^th of December. Thank God, it was on a Sunday this time (The Annual convocation of J.U is always held on the 24^th , the foundation day of the university), otherwise, the probability of a Bandh on the convocation day could have been pretty high. All those apprehensions about wearing a plain white cotton saree with saffron border and returning home in one piece  with the degree scroll <;-)> was put to rest. Well, that doesn’t mean I did not have my fair share of accidents; especially while boarding the public conveyance. But let’s just say I came out unscathed.

Sunday had been a long day, right from 9 am in the morning till around 5pm when I reached home. A casual glance to catch up on the morning newspaper’s first page headline is what induced me to write this post. The news was about a  guy who had passed out from my school, a graduate of IIT Kharagpur , a holder of an MBA degree from a reputed institute,  and an employee in a multinational company had been strangled to death and left in a dark, desolate place in his car with his wallet, credit cards, valuable belongings, missing.

No, I do not feel emotional about the incident just because the fellow was from my school, or he had lived in my hometown or because he is a Bengali. I never knew this guy, never heard his name. Possibly, may have seen him as a prefect and that too is quite debatable.  But, it just seemed a bit awkward to come across this piece of news on the day I graduated.

From the time we realize our consciousness, we are constantly told by our parents, teachers, acquaintances, neighbours, relatives etc about how important it is to work hard when it comes to academics. How important it is to compete, and to get ahead of others. When you become a little older, they continue to cite examples about that individual who has done such and such thing, has achieved this brilliant result and is now working in that “big multinational company”, and his/her pay package is that big… and this is supposed to be a “good life”. This is supposed to be “achieving something in life”; to earn a reputation among others and sometimes this has such far-reaching effects that a person working in a big multinational company, and staying abroad also gets tagged as a “very good person”.

That is another end of the story. But often I have wondered whether this concept of good life has any continuity. This incident and scores of others which happen quite frequently point to the fact that there is nothing that adds meaning to the effort that one puts in to achieve his/her goal. Take this person for instance. He worked hard in school, he worked in college and he possibly was working quite hard in his job as well. Those hours that he had spent in studying and working helped him stand out in the crowd. And yet, his life had to end abruptly, with the apparent motive being robbery. The story of his life would always be “what could have been” and then slowly and surely his name, reputation and achievements would  end up becoming obscure in people’s minds.

Come to think of it, how meaningless does this seem? We are taught to provide a degree of sincerity when it comes to academics so that we can achieve a distinct reputation in the society. We are taught that there is no alternative to hard work. But does this guarantee the continuity in life? Does this guarantee a natural death?

It doesn’t. Because for someone life may end up retiring as a CEO of a big multinational company, to another it may end in a dark night, in an uninhabited place, sitting in the driver seat of a car. 

Tea, News and Me. August 24, 2006

Now, the local newspapers in Calcutta are never all that attractive. Its just the same boring old stuff they cover, terrorism, attack on Shahrukh’s bungalow, cola thing etc. But reading the newspaper everyday is a religious activity for me, well at least the headlines, and the business page. I do enjoy reading the sports page, but more often than not it doesn’t have anything worthwhile. 2 out of 4 pages cover Cricket, and the other two cover advertisements. If it is a Monday or a Tuesday, you might get lucky with a report from the UK edition of the Telegraph, but that’s about it. 

But sometimes, the people in Telegraph suddenly assume the identity of Lucifer. Such reports come only once in a while, when I presume, the correspondent attains extremities in terms of sarcasm. But come election time, its time to disappear into thin air.  Or should we say, finger in the ears time. The report in the first page yesterday, was simply marvelous, to say the least. I am sure I will run out of superlatives. Lets just say, it made my morning tea extra bit special. 

Wanted, cream to cure tensionThe Telegraph 23rd August 2006

 Now it can be told with authority that Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee does not need beauty cream.

But what the chief minister needs badly is something the rest of modern-day world has found elusive.

“Please give me something that will ease my tension,” Bhattacharjee told a meeting where he was offered a beauty cream to sample. “I suffer from severe tension.”

The chief minister’s fervent plea was addressed to a group of ayurveds and experts on medicinal plants who had gathered for the inauguration of an ayurveda college.

The dam burst when the former vice-chancellor of Jadavpur University, Ashok Nath Basu, handed him a container of the beauty cream, made by researchers of the varsity. “I don’t know whether our chief minister uses beauty cream. But if he does, I am sure he will love it. It will make him look much more attractive,” Basu said.

But Bhattacharjee shook his head. “Oh, what are you giving me! I don’t need any beauty cream but please give me something which can ease my tension. I suffer terribly because of my tension. Please do something which will be really helpful to me,” he said.

Bhattacharjee said he had discussed the problem with health minister Surjya Kanta Mishra, who is an allopath. “Our health minister has advised me to remain close to greenery and rely more on ayurvedic medicine. I am trying to follow his advice as much as possible.”

Palm Avenue, where the chief minister resides, has some tree-lined stretches. Nandan, once a favourite haunt of the playwright-cum-politician, has greenery. But ever since he became chief minister, Bhattacharjee’s evening visits there have become less frequent.

Bhattacharjee did not specify the cause of his tension, though he has been nursing some headaches like land acquisition and cricket elections.

But then, imagine the plight of a certain Manmohan Singh, who has to deal with Bhattacharjee’s comrade Prakash Karat, Natwar Singh and now Telengana spearhead K. Chandrashekhar Rao!

Now, after reading this report, I also remembered another one of its kind. I consider them these pieces pure gems. And, they just come once in a year. So, as I am extremely jobless, and the situation is pathetic in relation to studies, it would hardly hurt if I include this story as well. 

Bandh Buddha turns deaf ear - Queries on strike strategy fobbed off

Telegraph  29th September 2005.

Sorry, I’m a little hard of hearing… I don’t always catch everything that is said” , chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee on Wednesday, with a hint of a smile.Eyes twinkling, Bhattacharjee chose to turn a deaf ear to the flurry of questions on how his government planned to foil Thursday’s strike and keep the city in work mode.‘Aami shunte pai ni (I could not hear you),’ said Bhattacharjee, brushing past reporters in the corridors of Writers? Buildings.According to doctors, hearing loss in Calcutta could set in gradually at the age of 50 to 55. The chief minister, 61, is a prime target, as he lives and works in congested and noisy zones, which can affect the auditory nerves in the internal ear. This prevents sound vibrations from being picked up effectively.‘Please write that I could not hear you… All questions cannot be answered,’ Bhattacharjee had added when asked later in the day about his government’s (anti)-strike strategy. But I will attend office tomorrow,’ he slipped in, for good measure.One doesn’t know if Bhattacharjee’s attendance record on Thursday would set at rest the apprehensions of his star guest on Wednesday, N.R. Narayana Murthy.The Infosys chief mentor, after meeting the chief minister, said: “Strikes are worrying… But as long as the government does not support the strike and takes steps to ensure normal running of business, it’s fine.’If Wednesday’s deaf-ear act was any indication, government measures taken to ensure normalcy on Citu strike day would be few and far between.Transport minister and Citu vice-president Subhas Chakraborty confirmed fears of government inertia during the bandh.“I can’t guarantee whether buses will ply. They will ply only if the drivers report for duty. However, those who want to come are free to do so,” said Chakraborty, adding that it was a workers’ strike and they could keep away from work if they chose to.On the eve of the 24-hour strike, the 61-year-old chief minister, however, had managed to deflect some attention from the city’s impending harassment to his so-called hearing impairment. When Metro lobbed the question to doctors, the most common reply was: why not get an audiogram done?“I am not sure how to take the chief minister?s reported hearing impairment, with concern or good-natured disbelief,’ said Shantanu Banerjee, a leading audiologist. ‘But seriously, his could be a case of noise-induced hearing loss, affecting a lot of Calcuttans above 50.’The prescription: use of an advanced hearing aid, either digital or analogue.  *Sigh* some masterpiece there. Please keep it coming Telegraph. You are an asset.