Wayward thoughts in this cataleptic winter

These winters of no discontent

In December and January I will not leave Bangalore, for I cannot have enough of this gentle chill in a cocktail with the warm sun, capped by this clean blue sky. The dreariness of the daily commute is somewhat muted, and sitting in the back seat of my car I can laugh at the traffic than rage at it, with music in my ears, which this week has been Metallica and Neil Young and Feist.

And so my thoughts regarding the new posters that are splashed on my path to work are more charitable than they'd have been in another month. Sreeramulu is again elected, and his victory is not a matter of who won, but what won. With him, several things have won again, and the things that are defeated are beaten to near-burial. But I am far from Bellary, and those who elected him took what he gave and gave what he wanted, and they are at peace with each other, and these thoughts of someone like me, for whom politics is no more than a piece for conversation, are a bitching waste of time.

Thinking so, on a morning this week, I decided to join the posters, and welcome with them the triumphant hon'ble re-elected Member of the Legislature to Bangalore. And I quickly realized that this man from Bellary owns Bangalore significantly more than I, and I can no more welcome him than he can tolerate me and the category of the electorate I belong to. So now I see the posters in respectful silence, and I am not at all peeved at myself, or at the world, thanks to this lovely December.

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The don's den

With such thoughts regarding the state and strongmen, I watched The Godfather today, Saturday, for the third time in my life. The Godfather died outside in the sun, while playing with his grandson, and with his death Michael was free to take the revenge the Godfather had in a brilliant move put on pause, having pledged with enemy dons that he wouldn't be the first seeker of vengeance. Until the end, in every meeting in his dark study Don Corleone had shown no love for the drugs business, each time he was offered it, whereas he held out a whole lot of love for his family and, among them, the most partial love for Michael. I was moved and inspired by the Godfather, and when he danced with his daughter at her wedding I envied him even, for Don Corleone was so much a man, and such a father, and such a don, and he was so noble in the way he moved and spoke and danced, and in the way he gestured to people with his hands.

How is life in the inner coterie of the Bellary brothers? How moving a movie would their life make? But the brothers aren't the silent type like Corleone, if you consider the shouting they've done in the legislature, and the gross abuses they've traded on the floor of the house. They cannot have a Brando or an Al Pacino playing any of them, even in an Anglicized version. Still, I wonder, how deep does a meeting get in the study of Janardhana Reddy? Would it move my heart, watching the play of long loyalties and the alleged honor among men in his business? Would I draw inspiration from some part of it?

Such wild thoughts! But they say that it is normal for the mind to be choppy on a day like this, when the moon is in eclipse.

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End note

On the street before my house, the magnolia are falling. They were a flaming red in November, thick in a canopy over their tree. Now when I step out for a stroll at night they squelch beneath my feet and pull at my soles, like they want me on the ground with them. After I pass the tree the fragrance from my neighbor's sampigé is so sharp, I look to see the smell that has hit my nose. Every day.

The moon has been out and about all week.

pardon me, but, your honor…

The view from the courts, Bangalore

I had to accompany a lady to the criminal courts recently. She is close to me, and is the wronged party in an incident that happened twenty years ago. A man forged her signature on a document and took a bank loan on its strength and didn't pay back his fraudulent debt. The bank approached her and it was quickly established that they had been duped and the culprit's guilt in the matter was recorded and the lady put the man out of her mind and went on with her life and work and, last month, an officer from the COD knocked on her door and asked her to present herself as a witness in the courts. She is a self-assured lady, but she was shaken a little at having to remember the events of so long ago. I thought I should go with her, though she was her usual confident self when the day arrived for her to appear in court.

The man who committed the crime was alone—tall guy, in white salwaar and a yellow kameez with gold-colored bead-buttons. And brushed-back fair hair. His eyes were placid, always looking ahead, not seeming to see anything. He walked about, scuffing the concrete floor, taking support from a wooden cane, clutching tight its curved handle. He could have been a retired professor, a former civil servant, or a businessman who has transferred his business to inheritors. He could've been any kind of successful man, such was his demeanor, such was his carriage, such were the lines on his clean fair face. He became aware of my watching him after a long while, and thereafter our eyes met and turned every few minutes.

His crime is petty by today's standards. The loan he had deceitfully taken, and defaulted upon, was some six lac rupees. He seemed to have settled the account in his mind long ago, and appeared to be at peace with the sum of his past deeds. My fears were for the lady. What mischief might the defendent's lawyer spring on her, so as to free his client? Indeed, his questions were as frightening as they sounded foolish: "Madam, you would have been signing so many papers daily. Might be you signed this one different?" He asked the question while knowing the court already had a forensic report confirming the forgery!

But the lawyer needed something, anything, to make himself worthwhile for his client. "Madam (maydum), did you sign to help my client, because you had taken pity on him?" But maydum hadn't seen the man until after his crime.

The courtroom was small. The hon'ble judge was a lady with a strict air on a girl's face. She sat on a dais, there was a second chair next to her for a clerk to type into a computer. After a time she asked about me. "He is not necessary," she announced, and I had to leave the room and stand outside and watch the man and my lady from outside, where I stood resting my back on the parapet. My lady had received the old files from the COD, which she leafed through rapidly, and by now the old man was seated right next to her, casting casual glances at the papers in the times the lady halted from leafing to read what she had found. The man had no paper in hand, his lawyer had merged with other people in the courtroom, and the public prosecutor, my lady's support, was flitting between adjacent courts, fulfilling parallel tasks.

It was a busy court. Even as our issue was in session, a posse came clanging into the corridor, two men in chains bound to four men in khakhi. The men were unchained and the cops dropped the metal in a heap right by me. One of the men, a lean swarthy chap with inquiring eyes and restless limbs, lounged next to me. "What is your case?" I asked him after a while. "Letter of credit," he said, taken aback at being asked, at being spoken to at all. And the manner of his answer signaled loud and clear that he wanted no more questions. Letter of credit? I was just as astonished, because the man didn't even appear literate.

My lady emerged triumphant after an hour, and told me I could leave if I wished, because she would have to wait a while to sign the proceedings. All had gone well. She was laughing about the defendent's lawyer. "He says he will note that I signed the papers to favor the man's brother!" That brother was a senior civil servant at the time of the crime.

Today, for no reason but that I must be in touch with her, my wife and I will have dinner with the old lady. I am thinking about the man who has walked free for twenty years after his crime and will probably go to jail now. It is clear where the wrong lay then, but I am not at all sure if that wrong is still wrong after all the time that has passed, and if that frail old man should really go to prison now.

Why don't I?

I’m in Bangalore. I enjoyed the days of Diwali last week on account of the traffic having thinned to maybe some 50%, but the nights were terrible with pounding sound. Somewhere on my street someone lit a string of crackers at 3:00 AM Friday morning. Back of my house they played music until 3:00 on Thursday. A jeep arrived and the music stopped. But the streets were clear, proving that a good portion of today's Bangaloreans have moved in from other places. Driving around last week, it seemed that our city hasn't lost all its charm.

Work goes on at its own pace for the underground Metro, at the Cauvery Bhavan Road, Bangalore

The papers say the shopping was great this Diwali, but my eyes were on other news. A stray dog came on to the F1 track, which news came as-it-happened on the Straits Times feed via their iPhone app. Fans turned rowdy after a Metallica event was postponed at the moment when the performance should have begun, and the embarrassment trended at the the top on Twitter. I searched for Yeddiyurappa’s pulse in the papers but they were cool to him, and I thought, “it is okay, his matters are between him and his gods, and may God bless him.” In the meantime the papers confirmed that more ministers are being herded to the line that goes to jail. Their leader from Delhi—the valiant Advani—came to town, undeterred by a bomb in his path and the deeds of his best men in his “gateway to the south.”

A debate raged regarding a post by an Indian software engineer which appeared in the New York Times. It is a touching account on why he quit India a second time, and this time for good. It is a well-written piece and though it seems a justification for a decision that is personal, it has stoked vigorous debate and, with a follow-on post from the author, some drama as well. "While I wait," he says in the title to his second post, choosing to take seriously some Indian who has said he will hunt him down.

I am not done arranging my thoughts regarding this, reflecting on some good NRI friends, and some (most) other NRIs who tend to lump every Indian who has stayed behind with the India mess. "Why don’t you…" is a prefix with which an NRI who is a senior executive with a multinational customer asks me questions when we meet twice a year and sit for dinner after work. He is not too different from other NRIs I bump into—on the plane, in a conference, in a hotel somewhere, in India, abroad. Why don't I stop Indian corruption? Why don't I build roads and ports and buy more planes? Why can't I remove the beggars at the stoplights? Why can't I be tough like the Chinese in Indian policy making? How can I be so callous regarding Indian food shortages? And this raging inflation? Why can't I install a better Prime Minister? Chief Minister? Any minister?

Once, while some folks were opposing the hosting of the Miss World competition at the Windsor Manor Hotel in Bangalore, I was stranded with an NRI at the Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv. I was young then. Maybe I would have liked to see those women; I don't know. But the NRI had a question for me on the subject: “Why do you want to stop that show? Can’t you see how you are damaging the reputation of India?" I searched his face; the man was sincere. I still haven't an answer for him.

How much effort does it take a man, me included, to move his life from anywhere in the world to the United States? To Australia? To England? To Singapore? What does it take to live in India and take the blows? To accept the challenge to contribute here? Can I lecture an NRI? Should the NRI lecture me?

I apologize, dear reader. I have digressed from that nice post by that software engineer. Please go there. While there, please see how in the logo of India Ink the folks at the New York Times have solved the Kashmir problem with one blot of ink. Which a million guns couldn't do!

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BBC: Why I came 'home' to India

And I wish I'd rather be…

Some wayward thoughts after reading Adiga's good book.
Aravind Adiga: Last Man in Tower

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Aravinda Adiga’s builder—Dharmen Shah—is super-rich. And fat. He goes about his workday with a passion the reader would expect of him, and he coughs blood into his handkerchief which, too, is in keeping with that reading of big businessmen as sinners forced soon enough to balance their sins. When a project gathers heat Adiga’s builder cools off with a mistress who calls him uncle in almost every sentence. He listens to Kishore Kumar—the book doesn’t tell if he has the reading habit. But the builder means to be a good, more-than-fair businessman. He is ambitious and his restless competitor drives the builder to expend himself more than he should in his mirthless existence. Shah throws extravagant parties; but they are not for fun, they’re for extending his greasy business. His right hand men whom he employs a man at a time are dispensable, and they are dispensed with, because the builder’s right hand men are in truth “left hand men”, and the dirty work that they must perform soils them so much, their time with Shah must soon end.

I’ve seen only a few builders, and they differ from Adiga’s Shah. I’ve seen Nitesh of Nitesh Estates, and another Bangalorean builder whom I saw in Bombay, while I vied with him to pay courtesies to a harried Principal Secretary of the Karnataka Government. And the scion of a Bangalorean builder at a seminar in the Taj Residency Hotel. Nitesh I saw at the Vidhana Soudha, he was at the door of the conference hall waiting to be called in. The Governor was presiding over the meeting of the Single Window Agency, and Nitesh was going to get 400 acres somewhere for an evolved, higher-end development. Nitesh wore a dark suit, and black slip-on shoes with butterfly ornamentation on their top. At a point the Chief Secretary stepped out for a quick trip to his chambers and he and Nitesh walked together a short distance and exhanged a few words. The Secretary walked on, and Nitesh turned, and smartly scuffed his heels, and returned to his team near the door. Envy rose up in me, and I was helpless as it sped about my system. The young man was as sleek as some of his buildings.

The builder I got to see in Mumbai was Mantri, at The Taj, in Nariman Point, where the Karnataka Government—led by the Chief Minister—were meeting Bombay’s businessmen to draw them to an upcoming Global Investors Meet in Bangalore. A biggie introduced Mantri to Baligar, the Principal Secretary. “Mr. Mantri’s mall in Bangalore is the biggest in Asia, sir.” Baligar registered that, somewhat absently, hugging files and a fat laptop and struggling to manage that slipping load. But it was Mantri who held my eyes. Erect, clean and bright, dapper and proud and yet beaming and respectful and focused on Baligar. Mantri didn’t speak, but only smiled for the seconds the meeting lasted before others crowded into Baligar and Baligar sought to fly from a situation getting dire. I was envious before this builder too, as much as I’d been before Nitesh in Bangalore.

In a seminar that an American conducted at The Taj Residency in Bangalore, the most enthusiastic participant was the scion of Vakil Housing. The seminar was about growth. The youth from Vakil’s had many questions, made plenty of notes, and was quick to raise his hand to answer a question—or to ask one. That was some years ago. I wonder at which height Vakil’s vector flies today, and I’m sure it is lofty. To tell you of that day at the Taj, I was a mere spectator in thrall to that young performer from a blazing industry.

Dharmen Shah is a fine creation and his character works quite well in Adiga’s story, but the rich I see are more like the men I’ve noted here. I must admit that when I look at the very rich I cannot help but think for a moment if there’s in them a Richard Cory, concealing a surprise as in the song, but a Cory is rare in these parts. I don’t know about you, dear reader, but to me the rich look very good, and they last.

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The Richard Cory song

The Richard Cory Song

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to weave a tale of three cities

Window-shopping for art in St. Germain, Paris

A battle was waged and lost to save a couple of dozen magnificent trees in Sadashivanagar. A clutch of commoners cannot wrest from the state what the state has grasped. Now those trees have been sold cheap and consigned to memory. The fight to save them was spirited, though: women hugged them and wouldn’t let go until the police found a way to pull them away without causing a sexist outrage; men climbed the trees to prevent the buyers from sawing the trunks below. The media made its pitch even as it gathered the news it needs. But the arm of the lawman proved stronger, and the law weighed with the lawmakers. In the meantime our chief minister—who passed the place daily—has fallen, and his pal has taken his place. The spirit of the ruling class is aging to a convenient changeless script and its growing vintage serves the rulers well; the spirit of the middle-class masses is aging badly and is in fact already quite foul, and frothing. So deep is the rift now that the two sides have ceased to come to battle: each has given up on the other, and there is much to worry regarding this truce brought on by hopelessness.

Several times I’ve thought I must flee this unsavory place, but the money I need for the places I seek, I can best make here. I am smitten by two true cities: Paris and New York. (And a little by London, too.) So, then, I have a city a continent, from two continents. What tale can an Indian weave out of these far cities while domiciled in his exasperating hometown? Those two cities are no strangers to Indians, and in New York City my countrymen have cut for themselves a feast-sized slice of the dangling plantain that is Manhattan. What can I perceive of these cities that would excite that wayward reader who has strayed into my lot in the world-wide web?

Nothing, possibly. I spent some days already this year in Paris and New York City and they were a balm to me after a bad time in Bangalore. So in the last weeks I have begun to design my life so I can divide my time between Bangalore and the two of them. Can such a scheme bring happiness to someone so jaded? Perhaps not. Maybe happiness should not be my quest. It might be better to merely experience (as work) two cities that have been deeply loved and lovingly served by leader and commoner in competing proportions.

I read recently Glaeser's The Triumph of the City: Paris before Baron Haussmann wasn't much of a city. New York City was at times diseased, at times corrupt and for a long time decrepit. New York City has lived in the heights and has been in the dumps; defeat and despair and humiliation was repetitious for Paris. And now, none will challenge the respect Parisians command for their knowhow for good living. And anyone can see the creative energy that is squeezed into the island of Manhattan, and unloosed there.

I fell in love with Paris in June, and, as I was departing the city, I heard of Woody Allen's movie and was saddened that many more will begin to romance Paris along with me. I sense a jealousy, which tells me I didn't fall in love with Paris—I’ve been seduced by it, and I cannot bear that there will be others to whom Paris will reveal its river and its buildings, its cafes and its museums, its streets and its bridges, its gardens and its palaces, its art and its buskers, and its fabulous young who court outdoors in the light that plays in its air. And I am surprised that this beauty has chosen to seduce even me, an unremarkable Indian man without the ample means that a life in it demands if that life should be experienced in full, a man lacking the intellect of other men and women to whom it has played muse for centuries, a man from whom fashion and glamor maintain a snob’s distance, a man who cannot tell the subtleties of its wine, a vegetarian man, a man who can eat (from the over four hundred types that Paris offers) only the hard and spiced Gouda cheese, which cheese is not even French. So I’m telling myself to be grateful, and to learn to be deep and broad and big like this great city.

I am thus warmed these rainy days in Bangalore, full of anticipation of my next visit to Paris, which begins 18-August, and the tramping I’ll do in New York City, commencing 4-October.