Lord it over

It was a bright sunny day, the sort that comes at a  premium in London, when I set off to watch India v England at Lords. It was odd - the home of cricket, here WG Grace smacked the ball around with a toss of his impressive beard, here Michael Holding murdered the English batting lineup after Tony Grieg said he would make the West Indies "grovel", and here Ganguly and Dravid played their first Test series, succeeding in their contrasting styles. And I was here to watch a 20-20. Talk about strange bedfellows.

But whatever, when I walked in, I caught my breath for a second - the ground is absolutely gorgeous, and as soaked with history as I could have imagined, and as modern as it gets, with the new media stand looming impressively to one side. I turned to Jenner, who was also at the ground for the first time, and we both shook our heads in disbelief, and had idiotic grins of excitement permanently etched on our faces (right until Yuvraj got out).

And man, the atmosphere was un-be-lievable. i mean, my stand had about 2000 Indian fans, and about ten englishmen - three were sat in front of me, and three behind, as luck would have it. The brit in front of me turned to me in disbelief and said: "Are we in Mumbai or London?" and i know how he felt. 

First off, Ireland v Sri Lanka, which was a great game. But there was no question about which game people came to see. 

Ive seen several test matches and ODIs at the stadium, saw India v Pakistan, a great test match, and India beating Aus. in the decider in THAT series when Laxman got 281, but believe me, none of those compared with the excitement and atmosphere in this stadium. It was just electric - and when the national anthems were sung, and the whole stadium erupted in a ear-splitting "Jai Hai!" it was the most phenomenal feeling.

The first innings was incredible - Pietersen and Bopara were runnign away with the game, but boy when Jadeja got Bopara's wicket, we were all out of our seats, some people even did a Ganguly-style shirt wave sans the shirt... and when Pietersen got out, Jenner normally soft spoken intellectual was howling "Get lost you BASTARD, just FUCK OFF", spraying spittle all over the english fans in front of us to rub salt into the wound...

but I must say i had tremendous admiration for the english fans behind me - their spirited rally included chants such as "Singh is shit" when the words "singh is king" were ringing thro the stadium, and when Harbhajan held back his run up in anticipation of KP's switch hit, the guys behind me started shouting "Shame on India.. It's a disgrace.." and then repeated it, and then repeated it again, when they couldn't come up with anything new. You have to be really brave to say that amidst 2,000 volatile opposition fans!

And the second innings. 

We had our moments of ecstacy, that first ball six by Yuvraj was ridiculous, and a couple of lovely cover drives by Gambhir. And that delightful cameo by Pathan, tho it was obvious to us by then that it was too late. 

Losing that game was one of the most heartbreaking experiences, with all the high hopes we had for the Indian team. Everywhere I looked, stunned Indian fans, some in tears - and I knew how they felt. I was just sat there, completely shattered. And I was to wake up the next day, stare at the ceiling and think - even being dumped by my girlfriend didn't feel this bad the next morning...

At the time, one of the English fans in front of me, turned to shake my hand in a gesture of goodwill. Jenner cheerfully did so (he bounced back much better than I did) but I just shook my head and refused. I felt really bad about it afterwards - but I hope the guy understood just how shattered I was.

At the time, I thought: That's a waste of 50 quid, isn't it.

But now, I feel differently - the highs and lows I felt in that ground was something you can't put a price on. 

10 indications that you're in danger of becoming British.

1) When you cancel dinner plans on a Wednesday night so you can rush home to watch the Apprentice.

2) When you start using 'mate' in your conversation instinctively rather than intentionally, and when you start saying 'chips' instead of 'french fries' and 'crisps' instead of 'chips'.

3) When you find, to your surprise, that you're usually on time for appointments.

4) When you actually get annoyed that someone's breaking the eerie silence on the london underground by talking.

5) When you can have a long chat with someone in the supposedly lower strata of society without being uncomfortably aware of it.

6) When you start hating Margaret Thatcher with a violent passion.

7) When you smile and say a polite 'good morning' to people in your neighbourhood that you don't know, but have passed by once or twice on the street.

8) When you read a report about another government cock-up and think: "That's taxpayers' money they're wasting!"

9) When you begin to take it for granted that nobody will ask you why you've lost or put on weight, and whether that mole on your face was always there?

10) When you say " 'We' played pretty well last night" when you're actually talking about 11 people you've never met kicking a ball hundreds of miles away.

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10 reasons why you know you'll ALWAYS be Indian and NEVER British.

1) When you stay up til 6 in the morning watching Rahul Dravid play that oh-so-perfect forward defence.

2) When you read a report about how the number of students getting A's in GCSEs have gone up by 0.67% since 2004, and think to yourself - even a Dr Cox-style rant wouldn't do justice to how little I care about this.

3) When someone's over for dinner and you absolutely insist that they have just a little bit more to eat, even though they've said 'No' three times.

4) When you meet another Indian, and find out - after many minutes of cathersis - that you are 6th cousins twice removed.

5) When you walk two miles to buy milk for £1.49 rather than £1.53 at the cornershop just outside your house.

6) When you listen to AR Rehman.

7) When you go out to Soho or Covent Garden, get completely pissed on beer and tequila shots, and then experience a sudden craving for thayir sadam and vadu manga (insert appropriate dish depending on where in India you're from).

8) When you read or hear someone mention the UK-US "special relationship" and wonder if we really ever did get our freedom..

9) When you know you shouldn't, but are dying to, make a racist/sexist joke which would go down pretty well back home - but would shock people around here.

10) When you read The Daily Mail

the ageless empires

I found my age of empires 3 DVD while clearing away some papers and popped it in again - it's been at least five years since I played the game. I was struck anew by the gorgeous graphics - just the way the tree sways when a woodcutter takes the axe to it - the way the fish leap over each other in the rippling water, and even the way the dogs scratch their ears. The background score is lovely, and the gameplay is pretty exciting - training cossacks and infantrymen, and building frontier outposts and mortars to protect your camp.
But I couldn't help feeling slightly uncomfortable.

I couldn't remember ever feeling that the game was slightly un-PC when I last played it... i suppose when you're a kid, you're able to carefully segregate the world of video games from reality. you kill germans, monsters from mars, stormtroopers, sacrifice your peaceful peasants so that your knights have time to recharge their batteries without giving it a second thought.
it's only when you're a bit older you start thinking about and "reinforcing stereotypes"...
and then i thought, whatever, i love this game.

so, i was talking to my sister the next day on chat, and tried explaining the game - the conversation:


me: anyway so thats my little incident for the day

i have also rediscovered age of empires

akhila: what is thta?

me: its a computer game where you are one of the colonial powers taking over

8:08 PM parts of 16th cent america

finishing off the native americans and so on

ultra un-PC but amazing fun

akhila: that's pretty awful

me: lol i said that for effect - you actually befriend the native americans

8:09 PM but its so patronising you may as well just kill them off

akhila: right

to be pc-right?

me: exactly

akhila: bogus bullcrap

me: and there's an expansion pack (not sure if yr familiar with that?) called asian something

8:10 PM and u get to be a young british officer, who is so sick of the east india company's atrocities that he gathers the local indians and rebels against the british

i dont think they realise how patronising that is!

white man saves black men from white men etc.

8:11 PM

akhila: awful

me: but it's a great game!

akhila: hey i want to talk about this in my postcolonial class

8:12 PM fucking awful

me: hey you should

you can look up their website

hang on

akhila: ok

me: http://www.ageofempires3.com/

this has all the stories and that

you wont have to play the game!

8:13 PM but youll have to admit - its a remarkably elegant website

8:15 PM akhila: dude it's nuts

which about sums it up, really - it IS nuts. but i'm still playing it!
i wonder if it's better to just play something like grand theft auto, which doesn't attempt to be politically correct at all. i think that's better cos, the maker is saying - it's all wrong, but just go nuts anyway, rather than having this warped sense of right and wrong.

OR we could follow charlie brooker's ideas for a really thrilling video game. My favourite is:

"Magic Agreement Party This is simply a game in which you sit at a dinner party table espousing your viewpoints on any subject under the sun, while everyone else slowly comes to agree with everything you're saying."

I'd rather play that than age of empires, definitely.

not-quite-british desi

the other day, i bought the slum dog millionaire soundtrack in the safe knowledge that it has to be good, not because it won an oscar, but because it was a r rahman. he's never disappointed, except maybe with bombay dreams.
what i wasn't expecting, is to feel this deep surge of homesickness, and a deep sense of wasting a large portion of my youth because of my cynical attempts to be 'cool'. this was when i heard the eighth track, aaj ki raat, originally from the movie Don, and i'd realised that despite my steadfast attempts to wall out bollywood, the song along with many others had seeped in under, over, and through the cracks of my mental block. first of all, it's a lovely track, and i seem to remember several others by shankar/ehsan/loy, both from dil chahta hai and kal ho na ho that i really liked. sure, they were laced by some that made me cringe ("it's the time to disco!") but mostly they were really nice. secondly, i'd totally forgotten how gorgeous sonu nigam's voice is.. it conjured up memories of being sprawled on the sofa and reading a book while my dad watched 'saregama'... of course this memory is slightly sullied by the remembrance of 'saregamapa! hero honda!' before and after every ad break.
the thing is, i was cynical about being mainstream - and bollywood is certainly that - and i was cynical about being americanised - so i went and anglicised myself.
how is that better? it's not, tho i generally feel that indie rock in UK is ten times better than american rock (i still think oasis is the greatest rock band in the world, and still listen to them obsessively) . but the thing is, i missed out on the indian stuff that was all around me.
it has actually stunned and baffled me how much the brits celebrate their pop culture. pop bands are reviewed in 'serious' papers, such as the one i work for, everyone unashamedly watches either x-factor or strictly come dancing, some guys even watch hollyoaks and discuss it keenly - the british equivalent of OC, i think (i haven't seen either for more than ten minutes, so i could be completely wrong). i think, from what i've seen, it's not particularly cool to go smoke up and jam on the acoustic guitar - in fact, it's distinctly uncool.
but whatever, cool or uncool, the point is, it's so much more liberating to have an open mind to pop culture, and while i may never get girls aloud or lady gaga, i've definitely missed out on some really nice music from both tamil and hindi cinema.
or maybe i'm just being born again. i actually totally get why NRIs are born again, its been coming for awhile now as far as i'm concerned. when i was in india, i used to get really angry at the way tendulkar was idolised, i felt other batsman were better. now i so get why he is so much more than a player, and just want to be home celebrating a sachin-century with everyone else..
how annoying that i seem to be having an american-desi moment even tho ive lived in india all my life!
who knows, i might even start learning hindi.

the final answer...

journalism is so simple.

take slumdog millionaire, for example. ive had several people in england ask me if 'that sort of thing' really happens, and i've had heated debates with several people in india if it's villifying the country, exaggerated, or just plain bollocks.

these arguments - with other Indians - have mostly been long and pointless, and when people from England ask me - i usually reply "i wouldn't be surprised" - but i can't say yes or no.
i mean, i have seen police brutality, so i know THAT happens, but do they shock prisoners into unconsciousness? again, i wouldn't be surprised but i don't know.

are young beggars deliberately maimed? i am almost certain that DOES happen because in what little social work i've done i've heard stories of this sort - in fact stories that are worse, if u can actually imagine. but once again, i can't say yes for sure.

The Times did the obvious thing. It's so obvious that noone seems to do it.

They went and asked the slumdogs.

They screened the movie for 30 kids from the slums, and then asked them what they thought. The reporter writes:

"Barefoot in their filthy vests and shorts, they pick their noses, hold their mouths wide open and goggle at the television screen. The older boys - the eldest is 17 - clap their hands and laugh uproariously during the comic scenes. "

So beautifully written, I can just see that so clearly. Anyway, i digress. The final answer is.. (i didn't intend that)

“It gives an accurate picture of the world, of our kind of life.”

And about the beggar scene:

" 'It doesn't happen like that,' says Pipi, who claims to be 14. 'Most of the beggars stay with their families. Their mothers and fathers are in charge.' The children say that nobody in their neighbourhood has been mutilated deliberately like the fictional youngster who is blinded in Slumdog - but they believe that such atrocities do happen elsewhere in Mumbai."

I found this line quite moving, actually:

"They approve of the way in which Jamal and his brother are shown working together to survive. 'We have to look after each other,' says Ashfaq, 13. 'Nobody else does.' "

Anyway, there were some comments at the bottom of the piece from online readers - one of them is from Toronto and claims that the movie is an accurate depiction of life in India. I don't know who this character is, but I find it really hard to believe that he knows anything about it. He may be Indian, and he may have spent years in India, but how many of us who've lived all our lives in the country know about this world?

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About the movie itself - as eyefry says, don't know what the fuss is all about. I thought it was fantastic, moving, (even though I'd read the book and knew what was coming, I had to choke back the tears during the beggar scene).. whether it wins the oscar or not is immaterial. i mean, no country for old men won it last year, the departed won it the year before. sure, these movies were all wonderful in an arty kind of way, but slumdog makes you look at reality doesn't it? anyway the oscars is all bollocks, so i'm not going to waste time talking about it.

And the movie made me want to DO something, and from people I've spoken to I'm not the only one who felt that way – what more could a film hope to achieve?

the night is darkest before dawn

a few years ago (it's scary to think just how many years ago) i was sitting in class at loyola college, the incomparable prof. britto was taking a class in archetypes. he got past all the regular stuff off the syllabus, and then he suddenly launched a tirade on Spiderman.

"do you think those film-makers are fools?" he told a largely indifferent class.
his theory was that mainstream-blockbuster films are loaded with archetypes that signal the times. hence, "with great power comes great responsibility" is actually an analogy of america's position in the world. the only superpower, it was its responsibility to take care of the world, so when it works beyond UN law, it is, like spiderman, doing so for the good of the world.
now it may seem farfetched, in fact it may BE farfetched, but it was bloody interesting.




i recently watched the dark knight a second time, mostly cos its obvious that heath ledger will win that oscar posthumously, and i revised my original opinion on it. it's a damn good film.
any film that makes the public take seriously a man dressed as a joker, or for that matter, a man dressed as a bat, has done really well in my opinion.

but then, i thought i would apply britto's theory on the film, and came up with some interesting stuff.

first of all, the film is about terrorism. that much is obvious - the central theme is, should batman and the good people of gotham give in to a terrorist's demands? or as the isrealis say, can there be "no negotiation with terrorists"?

i think its a fair question in these troubled times, but dig a little deeper, and there's something more disturbing there. first of all, the terrorist is portrayed as just a lover of chaos, killing randomly for the pure joy of revelling in evil. terrorists in the arab world do have an agenda, they are fighting for something, and we go back to the age old maxim "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter".

BUT that sounds as though i'm on the side of terrorists - which i most certainly am not. these people are vicious, power hungry, and certainly not the ones strapping bombs across their chests. instead they are very adept at manipulating the despair of poverty stricken areas - isn't that where jehadis come from? - through religion or whatever. and they use these poor people to achieve their own ends - power maybe? or money? who knows. (plus there's a distinction between Hamas, who i think have a legitimate cause, and al-Qaida, who don't.)

but their existence is made possible by a global economy which allows for one group of people to be squeezed dry to feed the insatiable needs of another group.

and batman, who is hated by everyone once the joker gets going - is that george bush i wonder? is the film saying - it's the US's duty to do the difficult thing, the unpopular thing?
"these people will use you, and then when they no longer need you, they'll turn against you" the joker tells batman. now this DEFINITELY sounds like george bush to me. he was voted in a second time wasn't he? and then booed out of office at the end of that term. i'm certainly not a fan of bush, but at some point people have to take responsibility, stand in front of a mirror and boo away, as it were, instead of blaming bush alone for eight years of misrule.

anyway, the good thing is batman does not succumb to it, he refuses to 'make the right decision' (i.e. allow the joker to continue to kill people so as to not give into his insane demands). i really hope this is an allegory of the times. if the biggest countries in the world - india included - refuse to descend to the level of the terrorists, that would be wonderful. why? because you could, like harvey dent, turn into a monster yourself - which many people would argue, myself included, is exactly what has happened to the US in the last eight years.

see how neatly it all ties up?

anyway, this is all purely academic, i may be reading way too much into everything, so sincere apologies to anyone who is offended by all this!

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my video for the week is... the incomparable Captain! vote for, vote for.... CAPtain! CAPtain!

a new dawn

obamamania creeps up on you, catches you unawares, and then stays with you like an annoying cold - just when you think you're past it, you feel that sneeze coming on...

i tried my best to view obama with my normal cynicism for any mass sentiment. i was given enough cause, with everyone following him with a sort of manic obsessiveness. They even served 'obama cakes' when he won. what are obama cakes, you ask? Well, :

as you can see, i reached the cakes a bit late, and the other three sugar coated portraits of america's first black president had already been devoured by hungry journalists. i'm sure that's symbolic.

anyway, my cynicism received an unexpected boost by the inane coverage of the inauguration ceremony, when everyone was waiting in breathless anticipation to see what michelle obama would wear (i mean, honestly..) and then gushed afterwards about how cute his kids looked (who cares? this man is about to rule the most powerful country in the world for crying out loud).
my cynical side was inching towards the tape...

and then he spoke.

right, so that last line was ultra-dramatic, but i'm not going to apologise. because that speech was something else. this was a no bullshit speech. no feel good lines, just good common sense, "to be chewed and meditated on, not swallowed whole", as bacon would have it. but it WAS tinged with that sense of poetry and drama - how about "if they unclench their fist, we will extend a hand to them". very dramatic, but i can't help admiring the beauty of the poetry in that line.
if you missed it, here you go.

but as obama himself said on al-arabiya earlier this week, its not what a man says, but what he does. unfortunately, it's hard to actually get hold of stories which tell you what he's upto.

i mean it's not that i don't find the following stuff interesting - where and when he took the oath, whether or not there was a bible involved, how he'll be allowed to keep his blackberry, what time the lights come on at the white house these days, and how long he meditates each morning. it's just that i'd rather have the real news, please.

as far as i can see, stuff that he's actually done include:

1) declared the closure of guantanamo bay
2) ordered an air strike on taliban-infested areas of pakistan
3) contacted isreal and palestine, and assigned a top diplomat to negotiate
4) appeared on an arabic channel, symbolic in itself, never mind anything he said on it. (i linked to this earlier)
5) revoked, or started the process of revoking numerous extreme-right measures introduced by the bush administration, including one related to abortion law.

all this in a matter of a week-and-a-half. so apparently, all that stuff he said before becoming president WASN'T just what newspapers call "election rhetoric"

The full list of what he did in the first few days is in this guardian piece titled "The first 100 hours"

my cynicism and indifference are completely cowed down now, and lie whimpering in a corner.

it's not just that he is an idealist, it's not just that he is intelligent, and it's not just that he is mixed race and a symbol of change. It's his depth. Everything about him suggests that this is a man who can act decisively, but has deep philosophical depths at the same time. For once, I'm with the whole world on this - there is hope.

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unrelated, my video for the week on the left side of this page (i ambitiously plan to post every week on this blog) is the brilliant stevie riks doing an impression of freddie mercury. its the first video on the list - does anyone know how to get rid of the other two??